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kairologia · 1 month

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Your 12th house gifts and areas you struggle with most, according to your rising sign.

The 12th House is traditionally a desolate, dark, and isolating place. But what insights might you gain, were you to confront and explore that which you've been avoiding? Not unlike how every chart has a “natal promise”, every 12H has positive potential and negative burdens to show for itself. Here, we shall dive into that. Use Whole Sign Houses.

P.S: one configuration cannot explain everything about you as a person with a full-chart and a bunch of unique personal experiences, so if you do not relate to everything, that’s fine. ♥

— Aries Rising with Pisces in the 12H:

· Gift: Aries risings are profoundly intuitive & empathetic and this fact is oft understated. These people tend to be blessed with creativity & plenty of artistic gifts, and are incredibly inspirational to those around them. The teacher that inspires their students so profoundly they remain unforgotten even decades later, the hype man that supports their friend group’s endeavors most — these archetypes are found across the zodiac spectrum, but at an unusually high concentration among Aries risings.

· Struggle: they tend to feel overwhelmed by their unspoken emotions and have a hard time asserting personal boundaries. Aries rising natives tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves, and have a hard time keeping things in. If they *feel* something, they will make it known.

— Taurus Rising with Aries in the 12H:

· Gift: Taurus risings are blessed with incredible resiliency, & can overcome anything if they so desire. They tend to enjoy most & even be skilled at artistic pursuits that revolve around the erotic &/or grotesque. They are rarely put off by things, and are the type of people that can listen to you vent about all sorts of topics, no matter how ‘gross’ or taboo.

· Struggle: ironically, Taurus rising natives tend to simultaneously be very impatient while also being inclined to repressing and internalizing all sorts of emotions, not unlike a dormant volcano, leading to inner and outer conflict. They tend to be hot-headed and struggle letting go of matters they found hurtful.

— Gemini Rising with Taurus in the 12H:

· Gift: These people are incredibly grounded intellectually and it shines through their mental clarity and ability to communicate with precision. Though they may appear scatterbrained to others, their mind palace is incredibly well-compartmentalized. They tend to be great at artistic pursuits that call upon multiple senses at once and provide strong sensorial experiences.

· Struggle: Gemini rising natives tend to overanalyze emotions, which hinders the spontaneity and adaptative quality associated with other Gemini placements. They also tend to repress their desire for relational pleasure and connection, and have a hard time accepting that even they desire to connect with others.

— Cancer Rising with Gemini in the 12H:

· Gift: Cancer risings are capable of understanding the perspective of others with incredible ease, which grants them a versatile penmanship & communication skillset. They tend to excel at communication, writing, teaching, getting things across, as no matter how complex the topic at hand they will manage to break it down to others in a manner that is simple enough to be understood by anyone — in part explaining why they tend to be so great with kids.

· Struggle: Cancer rising natives often have a hard time reconciling rational thought with emotional intuition, leading to indecision — growing up, possibly as a defense mechanism, most Cancer risings tend to pick one end of the emotion vs reason spectrum and sticking to it, leading to unavoidable inner tension in adulthood.

— Leo Rising with Cancer in the 12H:

· Gift: not unlike Aries risings, their intuitive senses & understanding of other people’s hidden emotions are widely underestimated. Their ability to foster deep emotional connections with others & nurture those around them is second to none. They also tend to have the very rich & versatile emotional inner world that is often associated with water moons – in part explaining why they’re known for their creativity & dramatic flair.

· Struggle: Leo risings have a tendency to retreat into isolation upon feeling vulnerable. They tend to repress their feelings from the outside world, and hardly feel comfortable enough to let anyone in. In more extreme cases, there might even be a propensity towards denying certain emotions and repressing them altogether. They have a very polished facade & a strong sense of self, and consequently will hardly appreciate breaking out of character.

— Virgo Rising with Leo in the 12H:

· Gift: Virgo risings are known for telling it like it is — their authentic manner of self-expression and courage to confront anything that gets in their way is their signature brand. Though many Virgo risings tend to prefer blending in and going unnoticed, they’re in actuality extremely creative, and will hardly let other people’s narrative steer them at will.

- Struggle: a Virgo rising’s biggest critic is themselves, and oftentimes they tend to forget that their own desire to be perfect may not be shared by others, as most people value authenticity over perfection — leading to Virgo rising natives feeling rejected by those around them, as their desire to advise and help is inextricably linked to their sense of self. They tend not to realize that said advice is often unwarranted and unsought for, consequently taking everything to heart, which may result in them struggling with self-acceptance and vulnerability.

— Libra Rising with Virgo in the 12H:

· Gift: Libra risings have mastered the art of knowing that multiple things can be true at once, & their analytical minds are loaded with insight into hidden dynamics & truths. They tend to favor a practical approach to resolving emotional conflicts, which makes them seem as though they fear & avoid conflict, when in truth they had already assessed the situation and figured out the best path to returning to center.

· Struggle: Libra risings repress thought & opinion to keep the peace, & consequently feel as though their opinions matter less or not at all to those around them — which, once brought up, might come across as a point of confusion to those around them who generally value their insights immensely. They also tend to overanalyze emotions, be it their own or those of others, and thus struggle with expressing deeper feelings, or believing others to begin with, leading to inner conflict.

— Scorpio Rising with Libra in the 12H:

· Gift: Scorpio risings posess the ability to understand subconscious patterns no matter how convoluted they may be. Even at times where they struggle with understanding themselves, their emotions, desires and behavioural patterns, those of others are hardly a secret to them.

· Struggle: the 12th house is a lesson on balance & compromise for Scorpio risings. Their desire for harmony in inner conflicts is often at odds with their own subjectivity & inclination towards taking extremes in their daily lives, so they tend to struggle immensely with balance. They simultaneously obsess over & repress their hidden desires & preferences, leading to power struggles within the self. They also tend to struggle with forming connections with others, whether it’s due to failed past connections or an inherent fear of commitment or merely an extreme sense of detachment.

— Sagittarius Rising with Scorpio in the 12H:

· Gift: Sagittarius risings are known for their fearlessness and inclination towards spiritual & occult pursuits. A Sagittarius rising is never one to say no to or back down from new experiences, and have a sense of freedom that is defining to their personhood. Everyday is a potential new lesson to these people.

· Struggle: the same sense of freedom may lead to their tendency towards escapism. They tend to struggle with confronting their less superficial, deeper emotions, & may repress their anger a lot in their youth — leading to their being a lot more explosive and thrill-seeking in adulthood. Sagittarius risings are the type to prefer trying anything – even things many would advise against, just to prove a point, whether to themselves or others – as they believe they have no teacher other than life itself.

— Capricorn Rising with Sagittarius in the 12H:

· Gift: Capricorn risings are known for their philosophical perspective & optimistic outlook on challenges, which often translates to an ability to grow wiser at a faster rate than their peers. Their beliefs & values play a crucial role in their selfhood, so they tend to invest a lot of time into spiritual pursuits.

· Struggle: the flip side of their beliefs and values shaping their inner world in a way that is hard to get across to others is that they may be the type to struggle with forming connections with people who do not share the same beliefs & philosophies. They also tend to fear failure more than anything, & struggle to surrender to their own place in the grander scheme of things — these two points are inextricably linked and in order to grow past either, you as a Capricorn rising ought to address both simultaneously.

— Aquarius Rising with Capricorn in the 12H :

· Gift: Incredibly disciplined and persevering in confronting their inner fears. Overtime, they tend to develop a sense of stability and self-mastery that is second to none. While not intuitive in the stereotypical sense, they tend to have inexplicable hunches about things that hardly ever turn out to be incorrect. They tend to live well with & within chaos, sometimes at the expense of their well-being.

· Struggle: they tend to repress emotions and have a strong fear of vulnerability, which hinders their ability to form intimate connections and grow emotionally — they feel as though they have a built-in indestructible wall blocking them out & holding them back from everyone else. They may struggle with becoming responsible, or feel as though they matured too soon. Sometimes, it’s a bit of both.

— Pisces Rising with Aquarius in the 12H:

· Gift: Pisces risings are infinitely more rational than they are believed to be. They have an uncanny approach to understanding subconscious patterns, & tend to reason their way through any situation before reaching a judgement. Very insightful people who tend to be incredibly inquisitive as well, and would prod answers out of anyone if they so desire.

· Struggle: Pisces risings tend to isolate often, whether as a way to recalibrate or just out of preference. Natives of this rising sign, especially those with Air moons, often struggle with detachment and may find it hard to relate to statements implying they are inclined towards emotionality. These people often have or had a “weird kid” reputation ascribed to them by their peers that often stuck well into adulthood.

If you’d like a reading, more details can be found here!

#astrology #astro notes #astrological observations #hellenistic astrology #astro observations #astrology signs #astrology readings #zodiac #rising signs #12 houses #12h placements

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prettynalilmagic · 20 days

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ℙ𝕚𝕔𝕜 𝔸 ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕕: 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕠𝕨 𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕜- ℝ𝕖𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕚𝕠𝕟

Decks: Considerate Cat Tarot Vol 2, The Dark Mirror, Tarot of Pagan Cats, The Wild Unknown Archetypes

This reading will be shadow work based on what exactly are we repressing and not aware of. And how to work through it with advice from me and tarot. Take everything as a small guide, tarot is a tool for guidance and not to see or predict the future.

Pile one

First things first, Go get therapy.

"Its not about choosing the chains.

Its about choosing them again and again."

Pile one welcome to your little section. So, I had a theme card for your overall shadow, which was Addicted. At first, I was troubled with finding out exactly what type of addiction was causing you to repress your shadow, and I kept pulling cards and I realized that your shadow is built on way too many situations that come back to your dissatisfaction from your life. Pile One your addicted to hating yourself. You have heavy cards that show me that there’s this feeling of self-inflicted despair. Your shadow emits contempt for life, you hate yourself and honestly hate life overall. The hanged Man in reverse shows me that you grew up very much internally, most of your experiences are based inwardly as you felt left behind on life. Everyone seemed to reject you. Your loved ones, and people who are supposed to be close, turned their backs on you at some point so in turn you did the same. The world rejected you growing up. Life showed you, that you aren’t deserving of love, so you internalized that and have subconsciously clung onto that delusion.

Pile one do you feel like nothing can change you? Nothing can fix you? That things will stay the same or get worse over time? Have you even thought about how you feel about yourself truly? When was the last time you willingly reflected on your own self-image? Do you think there's any motivation for you to live your life beyond what traps you? Going back to your theme card, your repression is very much self-imprisoned. You don’t see you can work through any internal conflict and you in turn have been chaining your own self to depression. Nobody is perfect, that's true, but self-discovery is beautiful however it's also difficult. This won't be an easy task.

Mentally, you’re at rock bottom almost every day. Do you dissociate a lot? Do you even know if you do? Because I recently discovered that I dissociate a whole lot throughout my life and have never known I was doing it. Human brains are truly mind blowing, it can take and hold so much stress and pain, then hide it away from us so when we don’t keep reliving and feeling all that hurt.

Nobody wants to struggle and be depressed, and our brain very much plays a part in helping us hide it away. Chances are you downplay or don’t care to think or consider your own shadow self.

I'm not fit to diagnose, but pile one look into Complex Trauma, C-PTSD, and being Shame Bound. Learn about various types of traumas, habits, and attachment styles on YouTube it will help you get a rough idea on understanding what you need to improve on without using therapy. However, please if you can, look into seeing a psychologist and a therapist.

I know life is super tough as it is for you and you might not be able to afford it but research if there's anything you can afford and if you truly have searched, look into self-help groups online and self-help programs as well. There are free eBooks you can illegally get, pirate that shit. Get a tarot deck for yourself and do shadow work readings. Also please stop reading all the dumbass future partner and next lover readings, invest love into your own damn self before investing it onto some person you most likely haven’t even met or aren’t going to meet. Sorry it's a pet peeve of mine. Chances are you’re reading this on your phone or computer, get on the notes app and write out that little ass of yours. Please there’s still so many ways to make your own mental stability easier on yourself. There's so much stuff you can do if you truly look into it, I recommend watching Patrick Teahan, Heidi Priebe, Psych2Go, and Kati Morton, they're my personal favorite therapy youtubers, and they can help you.

Okay going back to the cards, and not my own personal input, the hanged man in reversed also shows me that it was your environment growing up that has formed you into who you are. Life for you looked like everything was so big and almost outta reach for you to grasp, but you’re still here, you have developed habits that has made growing up easier, you learn to get by.

Which leads me to the present, you got the 9 of cups, meaning that your experiences have made you who you are. It ties back to all those built of moments of isolation and lack of love for yourself that you grew up with. Obviously when we grow up knowing others are treating or making you feel some type of way, you take from that and build your mindset on all those experiences.

This hatred is what we use to get by and we build ourselves up to work with our hatred. You know you felt like you are replaceable or have a deep fear of being left behind, we go outta our way to justify being the ones to leave others and replace other people with anything else to get that same feeling, until the same trigger happens. It's a never-ending cycle and growing up it can actually be helpful. As a child we only experienced all the heavy emotions and were not shown consistent or significant amount of effort for our needs, so we learn to not expect that and run away from anything that triggers that little child in you. No one was there to show love so obviously unhealthy habits and mindsets get developed and grow up with us and only gets worse and worse as time flies by. Pile one, you are depressed and hopeless but cheer up, just because your life hasn’t been the best does not equate to that being a set-in stone reality for the rest of your life.

You can make your own life better; the daughter of cups reverse shows me that there's this desire to play around with stuff, just do it. Stop thinking about it, do it. Fuck shit up, stop being afraid of messing stuff up, you think the ones who have hurt you stopped when they were making you feel not cared for or loved? Nope, so just have fun.

Do that fun hobby idea you been thinking about. Get messy with life, even if it is creating something very sloppy. You want to express yourself some type of way but feel like you shouldn’t? Well just do it, even if you feel like a joke or an idiot just try it and see how it feels. Even if you don’t necessarily want to do something or show off a different look or skill, and your more so afraid of making mistakes and not being perfect, just push that thought to the back of your head.

If you spill your drink and make a mess, guess what you can clean it up, you don't have to get mad at yourself or at the drink. Shit happens, and why should you submerge yourself into all the small things with these big emotions like anger and sadness. Relax and rest those pretty eyes. Which goes into your last main card, Four of Swords. Again, relax for once, don’t guilt yourself. Everyone who has it easy, allows themself to relax from time. Even if they don’t doesn't mean that you should do the same thing. Have fun, learn more about who you are and why you are here. There’s so much self-sabotage that goes unnoticed by everyone.

Learn from yourself, thank who you had to become to get to here, and learn how to work past that when that shadow side doesn't help you anymore. You don’t have to 100% love yourself to overcome your shadow. Because here’s the thing, you’re not overcoming it, you’re learning to accept it and work with it to do better. Your shadow is who you are and use it to your ability to grow. Pile one get outta here and watch some therapy videos pls, you will be happier even for just a second.

Pile Two

"What I can't have forever, I will have for a minute. What I can't have for a minute, I will hold to me for one second."

Hello pile two, welcome to your pile. I assume for the most part your shadow is not something you shy away from because quite frankly there's not a significant amount of repression that is being displayed; I feel like this kind of shifted into a little bit of a motivational reading from your guides to tell you about one specific flaw in you rather to tackle down one serious hindering issue.

You guys got two theme cards for your theme of the overall shadow side that you're repressing. I pulled Masquerade and Queen of my world, for you pile two. Both cards have one thing in common. Both are attached to the word Bargain. Which tells me that you tend to do the most to procrastinate the process of bad emotions or habits. Masquerade is all about living in the moment and doing everything in your power to savor and dwell into the fleeting moments you so desperately want to hold onto and stick to. Queen of my world is all about holding onto a facade that hinders the possibility of being seen as anything other than graceful and powerful. You also pulled the daughter of wands in reversed. Which tells me that you procrastinate as well, and you can honestly be very disorderly as well.

You repress your shadow self because of how uncomfortable you are for being seen as who you wish you could be.

You know when we live our whole lives trying to maintain a certain image, it can be so hard and honestly draining. It makes sense why you want to slack off and just live in the moment because maintaining the way you think you have to come off to other people is very draining and if you think about it, your facade is stressful weather you are or aren't aware of it. Having live off of short moments and a false persona is only going to fulfill you for so long, do you think pretending to be stronger, smarter, or fiercer than you really going to stop you from embracing your true inner strength? Because aren't you tired of always having to consistently perform? I don't know if you are even doing it for yourself because doing that for so long will tire you out and make you unsure of who you are deep down.

Pile two, I did pull the son of cups. Which is a very charming and very appealing person to be around, this just reinforces that you will be this at all times for everyone and everything. Given that this is the card that's supposed to represent your present reality, I believe that you are a very much cookie cutter desired person. Someone who is always on top of how you appear as. All I see is that there's this big grand facade of being this person that is so desirable and welcoming. Everyone wants to present themselves in a good light to an extent but for you pile two it's very apparent that this isn't a want for you, it is a need and you do whatever needs to be done to be this beautiful picture-perfect version of yourself, but your human, so guess what? You are at a point where you have to chill out and learn to be yourself, not the ideal version at all times. It's okay to not be what everyone else wants you to be, or what your parents want you to be or whoever else you want to idealize you. You're a human, you're only capable of so much, you're flawed, and you can want to do or partake in things that are different from what should be expected from you.

I pulled The High Priestess in reversed for you as clarification for Son of Cups. Which tells me that you are a very spiritual person, which would make sense, you are reading a tarot reading. Besides that, it brings up to light that your inner self is not being done justice.

Do you even understand who you truly are? Not what you think you have to be to maintain approval.

This facade habit is not aligned with your highest potential. Because face it, do you think you will be happy for the rest of your life pretending to be something that isn't the real you? Just because others think you will be does not make that idea a reality, stop deceiving your true potential.

I don't want to assume but my guess is you may or may not have immigrant parents that have kind of forced this urgency to be a certain way to please them. At the end of the day, you know how you want to be or wish to be. If you don't relate to that portion obviously disregard it, it could be anything from grades, skills, and appearance. Maybe it's a controlling figure, which could be a lover or a person in power over you causing you to feel like you cannot be authentically yourself.

The next card for you is Chariot, which is all about heading straight to where you want to be. Who you want to be. Nobody is going to be able to do it for you. You have built a wonderful mask for yourself for so long that it'll be hard to take it off and learn what you look like when you aren't wearing one. It will be unnatural to you at first, but you will get used to it. You got this pile two. I hope the best for you beautiful.

Pile Three

"I cannot recognize myself. But I'm still me."

Welcome to your reading Pile three. I pulled two oracle cards; Downcast Pride and Is this Me, which the purpose is to reflect on the main themes of your reading. Is this Me is associated with the last stage the Dark Mirrors Oracle grief cycle, which the stage of acceptance, whereas Downcast Pride is associated with the depression stage.

Which brings up the primary point- your shadow self that is being repressed, is your own lack of attachment to joy or fulfillment for your life. This pile does remind me a lot about pile one, as both were attached to the stage of depression. There's been this emptiness in our lives for so long, that we become very dull in life and don't bother to work or see things in a way outside of that empty feeling. Yet, on contrast to pile one, pile three is more so at the phrase of depression morphing into the stage of acceptance. Pile three has wisdom and more insight compared to both previous piles. Pile three you have this inward recognition that everyone is within means of having the capacity to alter your method of thinking and act based on that. You're the more self-aware pile so congratulations on that. I got the High Priestess reversed, Nine of Cups reversed, and Two of Swords as the cards to represent what is being repressed from your past. Nine of Cups was the overall main card for the first question and when it's in reversed I read it as dissatisfaction despite all the opportunities that have been given to us. Perhaps, we overestimated what should be given or granted to us and are disappointed that we don't feel satisfied even if our needs have generally been met. In other words, even though you didn't have the worst hand in life, you're not content. It's possible, you have taken your status, or a piece of your own identity for granted. Given the length of time we have used certain facets of our identity for so long, or maybe even briefly; our perspective of our identity can very much be impacted with that facet we once were attached to and what we used to represent. And it also plays a significant role in preserving our happiness and contentment. Now, this "opportunity" or fragment of identify has gotten away as time gives space for it to vanish off. Life is all about change, it's difficult to accept yet we can't and shouldn't allow it to dictate our personal fulfillment. Change is devasting but so is self-pity, a little self-pity is healthy for you, too much is detrimental for us to expand ourselves onto newer and better things. This could mean anything, such as growing up thin and gorgeous. Years go by and now you've gained more weight than you like, eyes have become dull and wrinkly skin has formed in the corners of your eyes, forehead, arms and almost your entire body. Maybe you're blaming yourself for not earning as much money or for not being able to get the same level of love, appreciation or attention from other people. It could be anything—even a passion that ignited a fire in your life that has gradually faded over time. (Mind you, I am not saying that if you picked pile three you have to be old enough to be worrying about wrinkles or having to make more money from the previous year, any age group could pick this. School, family and mental/physical illnesses can be factors as well not just time itself.) Two of Swords also brings up a different point, that highlights being at a standoff with decision-making. Pile three, did you make a lot of decisions based off of what someone else told you was better or what would best suit someone else? Two of swords displays a lot of lack of self-assurance and I think that part of your fulfillment that's displayed from Downcast Pride roots from not being more assertive in your own personal decisions. The High Priestess is a very spiritual card, and as it is included in the spread's earlier sections, I interpret this to mean that either an inner wisdom has been present but has been clouded by the lack of purpose and achievement. You have potential, but with all this chaotic energy, you have suppressed a lot of this fulfillment. Even after all this time has passed and you still feel as though you are in the same place in life. How come you never knew or tried to figure out what you wanted to do? You're not content and have felt like happiness and fulfillment hasn't been present in life. Pile three, it has to feel devastating for you.

Another way that I’m reading the high priestess is that the high priestess is all about our inner calling and inner wisdom. Based on the other two cards, I would say that this is what is blocking off all this magical, inner wisdom being brought up. Meaning, we must solve our own issues to let our inner voice be shined. Seek assistance from anyone or any place that might help you becoming more aware of your inner reality.

You also got the Son of Cups and Judgement reversed. Which just reinforces what I said the previous paragraph. Son of Cups represents a charming and idealistic person that everyone loves and desires. Whilst Judgement reversed is highlighting missed opportunities and failure. Failure to be the Sun of Cups. Failure to grow past who you used to be.

Mourn your past. Accept it’s not with you anymore. Move on so you can grow. I am aware it’s easier said than done, but it still needs to be addressed.

Lamenting over who you wish you still were, or where you want to be is rather pointless. Stop wishing for something thats now unattainable for you. Look for the new you, answers and solutions for yourself. Morph into something better so that the old you would’ve been jealous of new present you. When you think about it, it’s actually good that some things cannot be changed because then there’s a plethora of options for growth and numerous outcomes for who we can be.

Now, I pulled Father of Swords, for advice for you to help you work through accepting your shadow self. This card is pretty straightforward, Father of Swords is a very authoritative and is someone who strives onward. He’s also someone who’s very logical and knows that in order for blessings we have to work and set ourselves up for blessings. He does what he has to do to get to where he wants to be. He dosn’t live in the past, he lives in the present while working for the future. Spirt wants me to tell you to do the same so you can work through your repression of your shadow.

#oracle #tarot reading #free tarot #pac reading #pick a card #pick a picture #pick a pile #tarotonline #shadow work #healing

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reficu1 · 1 year

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I mentioned that I will write about mbti without stereotypes, at least I tried.To do this, I used my experience of communication and observation with socionics.

INTJ. This is a stubborn and self-sufficient researcher. I want to note that the image of a VERY smart nerd for INTJ is really a stereotype. Since INTJ have an alpha quadra (this is a value or a mission). And in this value, everyone is jolly guys. But the exception is the strict upbringing of the INTJ. Do an INTJ do something for the soul or out of curiosity, so is it useful or profitable? Or not? INTJ don't ask such questions. Yes, they are inquisitive and expand their horizons. Therefore, this type of personality can often change their hobbies and interests. Also, INTJs do not like competition, as it takes a lot of strength and energy, so they don’t need conflict for the sake of conflict and negative emotions. But they can say what they see to their face. straightness.

INTP. They avoid a lot of emotions, so they use their logic. Therefore, if they need to leave, they will simply say that they have business and INTP will leave. INTPs have a complex relationship with emotions, so they cannot sense or anticipate other people's emotions. Because of this, when INTP plans something, it may not take into account the opinions of other people, so INTP may begin to be considered "selfish". INTP is a critic and a negativist. Usually they will come up with something, even something that is not there, and will worry or hate it.

ENTJ. Straightforward and logical people. But is naive in relationships. Yes, they know their business well or how to get something quickly and easily, but do not understand the psychological impact. Over the course of a lifetime, an ENTJ can collect a large number of templates and use them for a lifetime. So if someone in the ENTJ's social circle behaves differently, it will take them by surprise. But he will try to solve the problem. ENTJ only look at the actions that are directed at them, so if you say one thing but do another, the conclusion will be from the actions.

ENTP. They love to joke immorally. Call someone an idiot. It's all ENTP style. Since people do not like to use pain blocks, and for ENTPs this is the ethics of relationships. They don't like the topic of relationships. Since this makes him plunge into the analysis of their own actions in relation to other people. ENTP see the world through a wide range of ideas and opportunities. Therefore, we live once and do everything that interests us, what if the sign "dangerous" is lying?

ENFJ. Feel the emotions of others very well. Even rather shades of human behavior. They see well the bad that is customary to hide in society. This happens unconsciously when trying to bring a person into conflict and analyze how the other person will act. Therefore, the ENFJ is like a dog in an airport looking for a criminal. ENFJ do not want to judge anyone, but will only say what is necessary to the face. ENFJ believe if you are their friend, then act like a friend, but if you make a mistake, then it is fatal.

INFP. This type is immersed in his inner world and fixated on the present time inside their fantasies. It can be noted that INFPs do not want to take money for their work, especially if it is a hobby. They can easily obstragirovatsya and believe in the best. Freedom is very important to them, but order is needed, as they can quickly relax and lose energy while lying on the couch. Routine work is slavery, so if there is no freedom in life, then there is no INFP in life. Because of this, memes about suicide appeared.

INFJ. The most comfortable. Usually INFJ inspires confidence in other people, as this type of personality finds its own individual approach to everyone, to share revelations. Attuned to changes in interpersonal relationships. Usually INFJ is a mirror, INFJ seem to be trying on someone else's image. Due to global thinking and emphasis on the ethical component, INFJ divide people into groups. Often they try to resolve the conflict quickly or not even start. Therefore, it is easier for them to forget or forgive the person who told them rudeness.

ENFP. Easily maintains friendly relations, especially if it brings a lot of positive and interesting events. But ENFP will not communicate with someone else, as this is a very reasonable type of personality. But on an intuitive level, the ENFP know if this person is theirs or not. Only at close range can one recognize this positive person as a rational person. Thinks ENFP very spontaneously from one thought to another.

ISTJ. They look at the world through his logic, so if you don't like their logic, you can leave. Therefore, the ISTJ is very picky about people so that other people are close to their opinion and logic. The longer the relationship with the ISTJ, then more rules may appear, but it depends on the upbringing. It can be noted that since childhood, ISTJ set its own rules. And in order to bring them back from heaven to earth, others need to throw a tantrum. An ISTJ can become bored in a relationship with a calm person.

ISFJ. They usually want to know more so that nothing bad happens. But at the same time, ESFJs are afraid of the new and the unknown. Therefore, this type is inherently suspicious. Unlike ENTJ, ISFJ draw conclusions from words, not from actions. Trying to change someone. This type of personality is not conflict, but if a quarrel have already occurred, then he will begin to lecture. It is also important for ISFJs to have a plan and understanding of their future. And ISFJs are very loyal friends, and it is difficult for them to part with a person if they have a lot of memories.

ESTJ. They are always ready to meet the problem face to face. A very tense personality type. Because of this, ESTJs can get busy and work hard, which is why they can be called a "robot" and it's normal for ESTJs to forget about their condition. If some kind of chaos is going on around them, then ESTJ is cut off and continues to work. Therefore, at work, the ESTJ do not pretend to work.

ESFJ. They spend a lot of his energy on communication. Who sees what alone and sees who, who is. Able to compare and draw conclusions from this. ESFJ switch between modes, so if they have moved home, it will be difficult to get them outside. Any changes or innovations stress the ESFJ. There is a distinctive feature of the ESFJ "If something helped me, then it will help you too" or "It's delicious, so it will be delicious for you too." And if someone wants to prove that it doesn't work that way, it will be very difficult.

ISFP. Their stereotypical positive attitude has a place to be. An emotion-driven personality type, meaning if an ISFP is in a good mood, they will go out and buy something to please themselves. ISFP will not look at their financial condition, if they have enough money for some kind of purchase, they will take it. ISFPs are masters of emotions, so they can help other people and fix their emotional state for better or worse.

ESFP. The type of people who do first, think later. And if because of this they did something bad, they do not find a place for themselves and there is no forgiveness for themselves. They try to gather everyone and chat everyone. Also, ESFP believe that they should do everything perfectly, and then get praise. Often they believe that they are doing their job better than anyone else, and more often this is self-deception. If you point out that their work is nothing, then congratulations ESFP think you're an idiot. And if ESFPs like you, it shows in the way they listen to you, then talk about themselves, even admitting their shortcomings.

ISTP. Bring in the soul, but not in words. Therefore, ISTP will not say something beautiful and poetic, but this type of person tries to do and show his feelings by this. They put their soul and feelings into their actions. ISTP see problems and do not idealize others. If you don't like something, you say it straight to your face. It can also be noted that ISTPs have a "creative" clutter that they don't notice. But in chaos, they always find everything they need, but if they get tired of this dump, they can take it apart. A very picky personality type, as convenience is important to them.

ESTP. When they want something, they always try to achieve it through participation in all events and ESTP take responsibility for the "parties". ESTP can always make logical arguments in their favor. And if ESTP don't get what they want because of some other person, then that other person may look stupid, because ESTP's arguments are ironclad. Can often tell others what to do so that the result is faster and better. But this is not out of malice, and if his actions lead to hatred towards the ESTP, it can drive them into a corner and lower their social activity.

#mbti #intj #entj #intp #entp #enfj #infj #infp #enfp #istj #estj #isfj #esfj #isfp #esfp #istp #estp #mbti personalities

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writing-with-sophia · 8 months

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Hello!

Hope you are doing fine. I had a question about writing:

How do you create a redemption arc for villain without glorifying the villain/ excuse them for their horrible past action? I really wish I could do some fanfic about redemption villain/character, but I'm always scare that I do it the wrong way.

Thank you and have a cool day 🌼!

Redemption arc for villain

Do not be afraid! I've read a lot of fanfics about redemption for villains, and I find that people in my community take them very well. So write down what you want. (However, there is a slight problem. I have never written a story involving redemption for a villain, so this article will be based on reference only and what I think is possible.)

Creating a redemption arc for a villain without glorifying or excusing their past actions can be a delicate and challenging task. Here are some guidelines to consider when crafting a redemption arc for a character:

Establish Accountability: It's important to acknowledge and address the character's past actions and the harm they caused. Show that the character takes responsibility for their actions and understands the consequences of their behavior. Avoid portraying an unrealistic and sudden shift in the character's personality or beliefs. Redemption should be earned and grounded in believable character development. Ensure that the changes they undergo are consistent with their backstory, motivations, and the challenges they face.

Genuine Change: The redemption arc should involve genuine growth and transformation in the character. They should demonstrate a sincere desire to change and make amends, not just for personal gain or to manipulate others.

Internal Struggle: Portray the internal conflict within the character as they grapple with their past actions and strive to overcome their flaws. Show their genuine remorse, guilt, and the emotional weight of their past deeds. Show the conflicts between their old ways and their newfound desire to be better. This adds depth to their journey and makes their redemption more compelling.

Earn Forgiveness: Redemption should not come easily or quickly. The character should face challenges, skepticism, and resistance from those they harmed or the wider community. The process of earning forgiveness should be gradual and earned through consistent positive actions. Portray the character actively working to rebuild trust with those they have hurt. This involves consistent actions and behaviors that demonstrate their change and willingness to make amends.

Positive Actions and Redemption Journey: Focus on the character's actions in the present and how they actively work to make things right and contribute positively to the world. Show their growth, empathy, and efforts to repair relationships or help others. Create situations that allow the character to learn from their past actions and grow. Provide opportunities for them to demonstrate the lessons they have learned and apply them in meaningful ways. You can also incorporate symbolic acts or gestures that represent the character's transformation or atonement. These acts can have a profound impact on the character themselves and those around them, further solidifying their redemption.

Consequences and Sacrifice: Highlight the character's willingness to face the consequences of their actions and make sacrifices to atone for their past deeds. This can demonstrate the sincerity of their redemption and the lengths they are willing to go to make things right.

Complex Characterization: Develop the character as multidimensional, with strengths, weaknesses, and internal struggles. Avoid simplifying them into a purely heroic figure but rather create a nuanced portrayal that reflects the complexities of human nature.

Learning from mistakes: Show how the character learns from their past mistakes and actively works to prevent others from following the same path. This can involve using their experiences to guide and mentor others, or taking actions that promote positive change in the world.

External Validation: While redemption is primarily an internal journey, it can be reinforced through the recognition and support of other characters who genuinely acknowledge the character's growth and positive actions. Introduce supportive characters who believe in the character's capacity for change, challenge them when necessary, and provide guidance and encouragement along the way. Ensure they have their own reactions, feelings, and growth in response to the villain's redemption. Neglecting the perspectives of other characters can make the arc feel one-sided or unrealistic.

Realistic and Challenging Journey: Ensure that the redemption arc is portrayed as a challenging and ongoing process. It should not be too easily achieved or presented as a quick fix. Emphasize that growth and change require time, effort, and consistent commitment. One common pitfall is rushing the redemption process, where a villain suddenly changes their ways without sufficient development or justification. It's important to allow the redemption arc to unfold gradually and realistically, showing the character's growth and transformation over time.

Empathy and Understanding: Offer insights into the villain's backstory, motivations, and underlying reasons for their actions. This helps readers develop empathy and understanding for the character while not excusing their past behavior. It adds depth and complexity to their redemption arc.

Growth Beyond Redemption: While redemption is a significant part of the character's journey, ensure that their development extends beyond it. Allow them to have goals, dreams, and motivations that go beyond their redemption, making them well-rounded and dynamic characters.

Remember that a well-executed redemption arc requires careful planning, character development, and consideration of the story's themes and overall narrative. It should feel earned, authentic, and contribute to the story's emotional resonance. Approach the subject with sensitivity and respect for the gravity of the character's past deeds and the potential impact of their redemption on the story and its themes.

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butterfly-lies-chase-them-away · 7 months

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Could you write an Alfie x Reader where they are soulmates in which when ones skin is marred (wounds, tattoos, that kind of thing), and Y/n is always in pain and getting tattoos she never wanted because of her soulmate getting into fights. This makes her angry with the man she never met. You can choose how this ends :p

Soulbound Scars (Soulmate AU) (Alfie Solomons x Fem!Reader) ONESHOT (request)

(UNEDITED)

Pairing: Alfie Solomons x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 4028

Warnings: getting punched in the face 💀 Summary: (The request) A/N: This was acutally a really cute request, I had to write it!

In the gritty heart of Camden town's unforgiving underworld, Alfie Solomons reigned supreme as a feared and formidable gang leader. He was intimately acquainted with the relentless brutality that defined the streets he called home. His life was an unrelenting maelstrom of conflict and power struggles, a ceaseless cycle that left behind a haunting tapestry of scars and pain, etched into both his flesh and his very soul. The very essence of his existence was a testament to the harsh, unyielding reality of his world.

But in the midst of this brutal world, there existed another figure, shrouded in mystery, whose existence was inextricably tied to Alfie's in a most enigmatic way. Y/n, a woman of quiet strength and boundless empathy, bore an unusual burden. She was, in every sense, Alfie's counterpart, linked to him by a connection that defied explanation. They were soulmates, united by an unbreakable bond that allowed them to experience each other's pain, scars, and life's trials.

Y/n's life in Camden Town was far from ordinary. She was a young woman who struggled to secure employment in a society that had little regard for her gender, and the ever-present physical toll her body bore. Her skin was adorned with an intricate mosaic of tattoos, scars, and bruises, yet these marks were not the result of her actions. Rather, they were a reflection of Alfie's turbulent existence, a testament to his unending battles and ceaseless struggles.

As Y/n walked down the crowded streets of Camden Town, she couldn't help but feel the weight of judgmental glances upon her. Her face, adorned with an assortment of bruises and cuts, was a testament to the unspoken battles she fought daily. Every step she took was accompanied by a barrage of side-eyed glances, a mixture of curiosity, concern, and, unfortunately, condemnation.

The passersby, with their fleeting gazes and murmured comments, couldn't comprehend the enigmatic tapestry of pain that adorned her skin. Some showed empathy, recognizing the silent cries for help etched into her features. Others, less understanding, chose to avert their eyes or exchanged hushed words of gossip.

Y/n's path through the bustling streets was a journey marked not only by the physical toll on her body but also by the constant scrutiny of a world that judged without knowing the depth of her struggle. Yet, she persevered, refusing to let the unforgiving stares deter her from navigating the complex tapestry of her life.

Amid the relentless scrutiny she endured while walking the streets of Camden Town, Y/n faced another layer of her unique predicament. Not only was her face a canvas of bruises and cuts, but her body was further adorned with intricate, mysterious tattoos that she had no control over. These tattoos covered her arms in a vivid tapestry of ink, each mark a stark reminder of Alfie's tumultuous life.

The abundance of tattoos left Y/n with a wardrobe of clothing choices that were constrained by the need to conceal the enigmatic symbols etched upon her skin. She would carefully select long-sleeved shirts, even during the warmest days, to hide the visual evidence of her connection to this mysterious man she share her soul with. It was a constant battle between the desire to blend in and the ever-present reality of the inked tapestry beneath her clothing.

Nights were another challenge altogether. Y/n would often wake up, feeling an all-too-familiar sensation of itching along her arms, only to discover the presence of yet another tattoo. These markings appeared as if Alfie's struggles and battles were transferred onto her very skin while she slept. Each morning, she faced the daunting task of examining the new additions, each telling a story of violence and turmoil.

The combination of her conspicuous injuries and the ever-multiplying tattoos made Y/n a walking enigma, a living testament to the strange connection she shared with Alfie. As she navigated the judgmental streets, it was as though her entire existence was a riddle waiting to be unravelled, leaving Y/n isolated in a world that couldn't begin to comprehend the complexities of her situation.

In an era where the challenges of being a woman were already formidable, Y/n's unique circumstances made her life exponentially more difficult. The inherent bias and inequality that women faced were amplified by her conspicuous appearance, which seemed to carry the weight of an even greater burden.

The mere act of stepping out into the unforgiving world became an ordeal, where she had to navigate a labyrinth of prejudice and stereotypes. It was an era where gender roles were strictly defined, and women were expected to conform to society's expectations. Y/n, however, was anything but conventional.

Her path was marred not only by the physical marks that adorned her face and body but also by the constant whispers and judgments that followed her like a shadow. The way she looked challenged the societal norms of the time, rendering her an outlier in an environment that preferred conformity.

Y/n's resilience was undeniable. To stand out in a world that sought to stifle her, to bear the physical and emotional scars of a life she never asked for, took a courage that surpassed the ordinary. Despite the world's judgmental gaze and its relentless attempts to stifle her spirit, Y/n remained determined to carve her own path, defying the limitations placed upon her by society, and, most notably, the mysterious connection she shared with this rebel.

Y/n had never come face to face with the man, but an undeniable aversion had taken root deep within her. It was a visceral sensation, a loathing that had no rational explanation but ran through her like a vein of unyielding steel.

Y/n's life had been intricately woven with the presence of a man she had never met, and the intensity of her feelings toward him was palpable. While the connection between their souls was undeniable, she remained in the dark about his identity, an enigma that both frustrated and intrigued her.

The absence of a face, a name, or any defining feature to attach her emotions to only fueled her disdain. She couldn't help but loathe the man who had unknowingly brought a cascade of chaos into her existence. It was as if her life had been entangled with his in a relentless dance of pain and suffering, and she had been given no choice in the matter.

The absence of answers, and the inability to pinpoint the source of her torment, was a constant source of frustration. Her heart was burdened by the knowledge that there was a soulmate out there, somewhere, who held the key to her mysterious existence.

Yet, despite the resentment and the ambiguity of it all, there was a peculiar undercurrent of curiosity that lingered within her. She couldn't help but wonder about the man who was the silent orchestrator of her suffering, yearning to understand the intricacies of their shared connection and the profound impact it had on her life.

On an overcast afternoon in Camden Town, Y/n was strolling down the bustling streets, her steps guided by a peculiar yet undeniable pull. She'd been to Camden countless times, weaving through the vibrant marketplace, but today was different. A magnetic sensation drew her towards a particular establishment she'd often passed without a second thought.

The bar, a dimly lit, weathered haunt tucked away in an inconspicuous corner, beckoned her like a siren's call. Its façade was adorned with faded neon signs and a slightly cracked window, offering a glimpse of a cosy interior where the hum of conversation mingled with the distant strum of a guitar.

Without knowing why, Y/n found herself standing in front of the entrance, the tattered awning casting a shadow over her features. Her heart raced, her curiosity piqued. It was as if an invisible hand guided her, a force she couldn't resist.

She pushed the weathered door open and stepped inside, the scent of aged wood and alcohol enveloping her senses. The bar was a time capsule, frozen in an era of dimly lit intimacy, a stark contrast to the chaotic streets outside. It was a place where stories were etched into every surface, where secrets were shared over drinks, and where the past seemed to linger in every corner.

Amid the dimly lit interior of the bar, Y/n's footsteps were guided by an inexplicable force, leading her toward a specific corner that seemed to beckon her with an eerie allure. It was as if an unseen hand had gently pushed her in that direction, while an electric sensation sent shivers down her spine.

In that corner, bathed in a faint, golden glow of a solitary overhead lamp, sat a large, bearded man. His hulking presence was accentuated by a formidable frame that seemed to fill the space around him. A thick, grizzled beard covered most of his face, and a distinctive porkpie hat crowned his head.

The room around her faded into a distant murmur as she locked eyes with the mysterious figure. There was an air of enigma that surrounded him, an aura of intrigue that had lured her to this very spot. His gaze, beneath the shadow of his hat, was intense and penetrating, as if he had been waiting for her all along.

The atmosphere in that corner of the bar felt pregnant with significance, as though their destinies were inexorably entwined. Y/n stood there, captivated by the presence of the bearded man, and the unspoken connection between them seemed to hum with an undeniable, almost magnetic force.

As Y/n stood there, locked in the intense gaze of the bearded man with the porkpie hat, a profound realization washed over her. It was as if time had come to a standstill, and the world around them had faded into insignificance. The magnetic force that had drawn her to this corner of the bar, the inexplicable connection she had felt, was crystallizing before her eyes.

The bearded man's eyes, beneath the shadow of his hat, held a gaze so intense that it seemed to pierce through her very soul. In those deep, penetrating eyes, Y/n saw a reflection of the same enigmatic pull she had felt, an electric connection that transcended reason.

At that moment, their souls seemed to align, and she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this man was her soulmate. It wasn't a matter of mere coincidence or chance. It was a profound connection, one that had bound them together long before they had even met.

As the realization dawned, the bearded man's mesmerized expression mirrored her own astonishment. The unspoken recognition between them was palpable, a bridge of understanding that needed no words. It was as if the universe itself had orchestrated this meeting, a fateful collision of two souls destined to be together.

In the hushed corner of the bar, amid the dim light and the enigmatic atmosphere, Y/n and her newfound soulmate shared a moment of silent, mutual acknowledgement. It was a moment of clarity, an epiphany that transcended the boundaries of time and place, and in that moment, their souls danced to the same rhythm, forever united by an unbreakable bond.

As the profound realization of their soulmate connection washed over them, the bearded man with the porkpie hat rose from his seat with a deliberate, almost reverent slowness. His movements were graceful, as though he were stepping onto sacred ground, each step bringing him closer to the enigmatic woman who had walked into his life like a long-lost melody.

Y/n, too, was not to be outdone by the gravity of this moment. Her heart raced as she felt an irresistible force drawing her toward the bearded man. With determined strides, she marched up to him, her eyes locked onto his, and her pace unyielding. The world around them seemed to dissolve into an indistinct blur, leaving only the two of them in the spotlight of destiny.

The onlookers in the bar could sense that something extraordinary was unfolding before their eyes, a connection that transcended the ordinary boundaries of time and space. It was as if they were witnessing the reunion of two souls that had been apart for an eternity.

Despite the magnetic and mesmerizing connection between Y/n and the bearded man, there was still a torrent of emotions that coursed through her. The hatred she had harboured for him, fueled by the inexplicable nature of their soulmate connection, surged within her.

Without warning, as the bearded man stood before her, Y/n's anger and frustration reached a boiling point. With a sudden, fierce motion, she swung her fist and landed a forceful punch squarely on the man's nose. The impact was a resounding blow, a manifestation of her pent-up emotions.

As her fist connected with the man's nose, the shockwaves of pain cascaded through their interconnected souls. Y/n felt not only the force of her own punch but also the searing pain of her soulmate's nose as if it were her own. The sensation was overwhelming, a shared agony that transcended the boundaries of their individual experiences.

In the dimly lit corner of the bar, their connection was brought to the forefront, not only in the inexplicable recognition of their bond but also in the shared pain they now bore. Y/n's actions were a culmination of the complex emotions that had swirled within her, and the bearded man, bewildered and in pain, held his nose, the realization of their unique connection etched into every facet of their beings.

The bar's patrons were taken aback as a young woman made her entrance, her presence exuding an air of defiance that seemed to defy explanation. The audacious act of punching the formidable gang leader in the face sent shockwaves through the establishment, where the norm was to avoid eye contact with such a powerful figure.

A collective gasp seemed to hang in the air as the punch landed, and the aggressive gang leader was rocked by the force of the unexpected blow. The room fell into a hushed silence, the dimly lit atmosphere amplifying the intensity of the moment. The patrons exchanged bewildered glances, their expressions torn between concern and curiosity.

"That's for not fucking taking care of yourself, you bloody asshole!" Y/n screamed at the man, the words laced with frustration, her own blood trickling from her injured nose. Her emotions had finally found an outlet, and they erupted in a torrent of anger and pain.

The gang leader, despite the hit he had just taken, managed to crack a grin and release a hearty laugh, the sudden absurdity of the situation not lost on him. ”Fucking ‘ell.”

His amusement, although unexpected, seemed to shift the tension in the room, eliciting a mixture of uncertain chuckles from some of the patrons.

"You pack quite a fucking punch, don't you, dear?" The bearded man remarked, his voice a mixture of amusement and respect as if he had gained a newfound appreciation for the fiery spirit that resided within the young woman who had just rocked his world.

"Yeah, I can feel that," Y/n replied, her voice laced with a hint of sarcasm, although her nose throbbed with an intensity that mirrored the exchange of emotions and pain they were sharing. The connection between them was undeniable, transcending the physical and into the realm of something far more profound. As they stood there, two souls locked in a complex dance of emotions, the world around them seemed to fade into the background, leaving only the enigmatic connection that bound them together.

"Let's get out of here, yeah?" her soulmate suggested, his words carrying an unspoken urgency as if they were drawn together by a force that extended beyond the confines of the bar.

"What's your name, las’?" he asked, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Y/n," she replied, her own lips curving into a hesitant yet genuine smile. It was a simple exchange of names, but at that moment, it felt like the beginning of a new chapter in their intertwined destinies.

"Alfie," the man introduced himself, the weight of his name now matched by the weight of their shared connection.

Y/n offered a small nod, a sense of relief washing over her. Finally knowing the name of the man who had unintentionally been putting her through a rollercoaster of emotions brought a strange comfort. The enigmatic puzzle pieces of their lives were beginning to fall into place, even if it meant navigating an uncertain and unconventional path together.

"Sorry 'bout the..." Y/n began, her voice trailing off as she lifted her hand and mimicked a small punching motion to indicate the earlier altercation.

Her soulmate chuckled, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he understood the gesture. "No need to apologize, love," he said, his voice tinged with warmth. “I probably deserved that.”

"Yeah! You fucking well deserved it, you've made my life a living hell!" Y/n exclaimed, her laughter ringing with a mixture of relief and exasperation. The absurdity of the situation seemed to dawn on her as she continued, "No one's gonna hire a woman who looks like she's getting beaten every other day, and don't even get me started on these bloody tattoos." Her words were a blend of frustration and humour, a testament to the unique challenges she had faced due to her mysterious connection with Alfie.

Alfie couldn't help but join in her laughter, his own laughter resonating with the understanding of the bizarre reality they had been thrust into. "Well, you certainly don't mince your words, love," he remarked with a grin, finding an unexpected camaraderie in the woman who had just punched him in the face. It was as if, in that moment, their shared experiences and shared pain had forged a connection that transcended their initial animosity.

"Well, looking like you, you could imagine why," Y/n replied with a wry smile, her gaze shifting from her own scars and bruises to Alfie's imposing figure. It was a moment of shared understanding, a recognition that their connection had created a unique bond, neither one had anticipated.

"Well, you can work for me if you'd like," Alfie offered, his smile carrying a mixture of genuine kindness and a touch of playfulness. It was an unexpected proposition, given their tumultuous introduction, but it seemed to fit the absurdity of their situation perfectly.

Y/n raised an eyebrow, the offer taking her by surprise. "Work for you? Doing what, exactly?"

"Well, I could always use a secretary," Alfie mused, a spontaneous idea forming in his mind.

Y/n arched an eyebrow, considering the offer. "Is it legal?" she asked, her practicality coming to the forefront.

"Does it really matter?" Alfie replied with a sly smirk, his eyes dancing with amusement. The legality of the situation seemed to be a secondary concern in the face of their newfound partnership, and the unconventional offer only added to the intrigue of the strange and extraordinary connection they now shared.

They halted just outside the building, its imposing exterior betraying the secrecy that lay within. Alfie held the heavy door open, allowing Y/n to step inside.

"What is this place?" Y/n inquired, her gaze scanning the interior with curiosity.

Alfie hesitated for a moment before he answered with a cryptic smile, "My bakery."

As Y/n took in the surroundings, it became evident that it was far from being a conventional bakery. The heady scent of spirits and the sight of distilling equipment told a different story. It was a distillery, hidden beneath the facade of a bakery, and it held the promise of adventures, secrets, and perhaps a partnership that defied expectations.

Alfie guided her through the labyrinthine distillery, the aroma of spirits filling the air as they navigated the maze of barrels and machinery. Eventually, they reached his office, where he motioned for Y/n to take a seat on a well-worn couch. With a nod, he disappeared briefly to retrieve something from his desk.

Seated in his office, Y/n felt a sense of anticipation and curiosity. The air was heavy with the secrets held within the distillery's walls, and she couldn't help but wonder what lay ahead.

As Alfie busied himself, Y/n decided to shed her heavy jacket, the worn leather falling to the floor. It revealed the intricate tapestry of tattoos that adorned her arms and shoulders, each one a testament to the shared pain and connection she had with Alfie. Her short-sleeved dress showcased the artwork etched into her skin, a silent testament to the unique bond they shared and the scars that painted their lives.

Alfie returned to the room, a low, appreciative whistle escaping his lips as his eyes traced the intricate tattoos that adorned Y/n's arms. "Nice tattoos," he remarked, a playful lilt in his voice.

Y/n couldn't help but smirk in response. "Yeah, you're a real artist, aren't you?" Her words held a teasing quality, a recognition of the shared journey they were embarking upon.

Their banter, filled with humour and unspoken understanding, seemed to define the beginning of their unique partnership. It was a partnership that transcended the ordinary, rooted in the inexplicable connection they had discovered, and the world outside the distillery seemed to fade into insignificance as their shared adventure began.

Alfie returned with a bowl of water and a small towel, his actions reflecting a surprising tenderness. He dipped the cloth into the water, wringing it out slightly before approaching Y/n. Gently, he began to wipe away the dried blood that clung above her lip, his touch careful and considerate.

Y/n watched him silently, a mix of emotions swirling within her. The contrast between the fearsome gang leader she had initially encountered and this side of him, which displayed care and concern, was stark and intriguing. The unspoken bond they shared was revealing itself in unexpected ways, forging a connection that transcended their tumultuous introduction.

"Thanks," Y/n whispered, her voice laced with a hint of gratitude as Alfie continued to clean the dried blood from her face.

Alfie rose from his seat, a soft smile playing at his lips as he emptied the bowl, the remnants of their shared pain vanishing with the crimson-stained water. With a quick swipe, he also cleaned the blood that had found its way into his beard.

Y/n leaned back on the couch, a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes. "So... when do I start work?" she inquired, her tone a mixture of anticipation and eagerness as if she was ready to embark on this new and unconventional chapter of her life.

Alfie paused for a moment, his gaze lingering on her before he answered, his words carrying a sense of excitement. "Tomorrow work for you?" The invitation was met with a nod from Y/n, and the distillery office seemed to brim with the promise of shared adventures, unspoken secrets, and a partnership that was forged in the most peculiar of circumstances.

And so, as they embarked on this unique story together, Y/n and Alfie found themselves bound not only by shared pain but by a connection that defied explanation. Their partnership, born from an unconventional introduction, took them through the labyrinthine world of the distillery and the tumultuous streets of Camden town.

In each other, they discovered not just an understanding of the scars and bruises that marked their bodies, but a shared resilience and strength that allowed them to navigate a world where the boundaries between pain and pleasure, danger and intrigue, blurred into something altogether extraordinary.

As they ventured into the uncharted territory of their newfound partnership, the scars that painted their lives, and the enigmatic connection that bound them together seemed to promise a future filled with unexpected adventures, challenges, and perhaps, a love that transcended the ordinary. The pain they shared had given birth to an extraordinary bond, one that would forever unite their souls in the chaos of Camden town.

- A/N: Had absolutely no idea how to end this off but I'm happy with what I've written. I hope you enjoyed this one-shot as much as I enjoyed writing it. I know they didn't interact much until the end but...it's still cute maybe Don't know how they wanted me to write this request but I hope they're happy. But keep requesting as I really enjoy them. :) 💚

#fanfic #au #peaky blinder fanfic #alfie solomons fanfic #alfie solomons x reader #alfie solomons #peaky blinders Alfie Solomons #soulmates #soulmate au

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trojanteapot · 7 months

Text

The writing blindspots in Infinity Train with respect to race

To get this out of the way, I love Infinity Train! It’s one of my favourite shows! I started writing fanfiction because of this show, and it still inspires me every day.

I really do think that Infinity Train as a whole is a very thought provoking children’s show and I applaud it for exploring darker themes relevant to psychology and psychological well-being, which are topics often overlooked not just in children’s media but for adult media as well. However, I do want people to acknowledge some of its shortcomings, especially because it is a show that is dealing with such heavy and complex topics, and also positions its human characters as coming from a world which is pretty much a stand-in for our own.

Now I know that the storyboard artists for Infinity Train were quite diverse, but I don’t really know if it’s the same for the writer's room. The reason why is that as a POC viewer, it really does seem obvious to me from the way that the POC characters were written pre-season 4, that their race was mostly an afterthought.

Okay and to be perfectly clear, this is NOT A BAD THING. This is just a neutral thing. Obviously we don’t need every single story with POC characters to have to be about their experience as a specific racialized person. There are experiences that are shared among everybody no matter what race they are. I am not saying that you need to do super in-depth research into every single cultural nuance of every ethnic minority before writing them. It depends on if you really want to delve into how their heritage or traditions or specific life experiences inform their character arc. Not every character arc is about that. And it shouldn’t be!

With that being said, I do think that perhaps the writers should have tried to consider asking themselves very basic surface level questions on how being non-white would inform the problems and conflicts their characters would face. They don't need to know the ins and outs of each culture for each of their characters, but they could have just asked “How would I feel/react to others if people made weird assumptions about me based on my race? How differently would my parents raise me if they were afraid of prejudice or discrimination?” I think they should have reflected on that before setting in stone the backstories for their POC characters, especially with respect to Grace.

Part 1: GRACE'S PARENTS

So I am not Black myself, but I have had many conversations about Grace with one of my friends in fandom who is Black, and we both do get the sense that Grace’s race was very much just an afterthought to her characterization. To be clear, this is NOT because she has very wealthy parents. I am well aware that there are Black Americans with generational wealth. However, knowing what we know about affluent Black people in the real world, how Grace’s parents treated her makes absolutely no sense.

For example, among extremely wealthy people of any race, networking and knowing the right people is of the utmost importance. This is why so many rich people send their kids to prestigious private schools so their kids can get a heads start on knowing the progeny of other one-percenters. If you look up famous people with famous kids, chances are you’ll see a list of all of the very exclusive private academies that they all went to (looking at you, The Strokes). This is the case for wealthy people of all backgrounds, not just white people. And honestly, I imagine that the pressure is at least double for the kids of wealthy POC parents to get to know the right people as early as possible to be able to open as many doors as possible, in order to mitigate the inherent disadvantage of being a racialized person.

But what did Grace’s parents do? According to her, they never sent her to school of any kind, only having private tutors teach her, and her ballet instructor only made her join the other kids in her class once for a recital or something? This is, for lack of a better term... buck wild.

In addition, her parents are American diplomats. Diplomacy is an extremely people-oriented position. If anything, her parents would want her to not only be in the best private school, but to be the best student in school, to know the best people, to join the school clubs that all the other diplomats’ kids are in, and train her from a young age to be a social butterfly. Yes I know that diplomats will often leave their home country and be stationed somewhere else for long durations, and yes their kids could be taken out of school then, but some diplomats just enroll them in a different institution in the visiting country, or not take them out of school at all. This is what the IB Program was invented for, actually. Her parents being diplomats does not justify never enrolling Grace in school. In fact, it makes it less justifiable.

The fact that they did the extreme opposite of that is so illogical to me that I wonder if perhaps the writers just cobbled together a whole bunch of tropes that they think apply to rich people without actually checking if any of it makes sense, doubly so for rich people who are non-white.

I think the reason why is because they wanted Grace’s parents to stifle her growth and her natural social skills, but on the Train, she can be who she truly is. I definitely agree that Grace finding herself and being able to truly blossom into the girlboss she is on the Train is a great plot point from a characterization perspective. However, I do not think that it should be because she was being stifled by her parents. The solution is staring the writers right in their face, but they can’t see it because it’s a blindspot for them.

What they should have gone with is: Grace's inability to become a social butterfly and a queen bee in her daily life is because she is a dark-skinned Black girl!!!

Her parents have extremely high expectations for her socially. They could have pushed her to make friends with kids she didn’t like just because they wanted to be on better terms with their parents for networking or diplomacy purposes – which they could have shown with that one girl from her ballet class. Missed opportunity! But no matter how hard Grace tries, she will never be seen as the perfect girl because of other people’s assumptions about her just based on her race.

Once she’s on the Train, Grace then uses her people skills and finds that they’re a lot more effective there, because it’s no longer Earth’s society, it’s a different world, literally! Plus this even allows her to be a little bit more mean, a little bit more honest, something she wouldn’t be able to get away with in the real world without being punished for it harder than her white peers. We already see hints of this with how she interacts with Simon, a white guy who is the same age as her.

CAVEAT: The dialogue where Grace reveals that she never went to school was something that she told Hazel in a private conversation. So it could be that she did go to school, but lied about it to seem more relatable to Hazel, who had never been around other kids before. Lying is in character for Grace because she would pretty much do anything to get on somebody’s good side. But the way that they had her voice actress deliver those lines, and the way that her expression changes when she talks about how lonely she was indicates that she was telling the truth. To be charitable, I suppose we can land on the reading that Grace told Hazel a half-truth. She did go to school, but she was frequently taken out of class or skipped semesters because of her parents’ jobs as diplomats. So her loneliness in that instant is at the very least truthful. Your mileage is going to vary on this interpretation of course.

This points to a weakness that I can sort of see in Infinity Train in general, where they push societal problems into purely the realm of personal failings. “It’s not because of society that Grace couldn’t succeed, it was solely due to her abusive parents” being just one example.

Never forget this monologue from a Black father to his daughter in Scandal:

youtube

Part 2: JESSE'S ARC WAS PRETTY GOOD THOUGH

The thing is they actually did write a POC character having to deal with a problem that was society-oriented quite well, at least in my view. Although, I am still pretty sure it was still coming from a race-blind method of writing the characters. Otherwise I feel like Jesse’s status as an Indigenous American would have come up more than a grand total of one time. That they could do this well for Jesse makes the fact that they didn’t do the same for Grace quite disappointing.

Jesse’s main issue that he had to overcome was he kept caving to peer pressure and had trouble saying no to others for fear of disappointment. Now, this problem is universal, and it’s not solely something that is specific to Jesse’s race or ethnicity or cultural background. In fact, I am quite certain that they wrote Jesse as a character without even considering that this problem he faces is relatable to POC experiences. But I definitely know a lot of POC in my life who do take on more responsibilities than they can manage, or feel a higher pressure to fit in with their peers. Hell, I’m that POC in many cases! It’s kind of like background radiation to us as minorities that we just have to do more emotional labour in order to be seen as equals. That’s just the reality of the situation. You can understand and relate to Jesse’s problem without being Indigenous/Native American, but at the same time it feels like a natural problem for him to have, because he is non-white!

I will admit that a personal blind spot of mine is I don't know and haven't had the chance to speak to too many Indigenous people, so there could be aspects of Jesse's arc that don't really make sense. If you are somebody who knows more than me, please feel free to correct me! I would love to hear how you felt about Jesse's characterization and arc as an Indigenous person!

Part 3: SEASON 4, THE ASIANS

Alright now it's time to tackle stuff that I actually could have any ounce of authority talking about? Which is how they wrote Ryan and Min-Gi in Book 4. I myself am Asian-Canadian. Specifically, I am a first generation Chinese-Canadian but I've been in Canada since I was six so I find a lot of the experiences of second generation Asian-Canadians more relatable to me. In addition, my partner is fourth generation Japanese-Canadian, so his dad would be the same generation as Ryan's dad. (I also am really really into rock music, but that's besides the point.)

What they got right:

So first off, I could tell that they really did consult Asian people in writing this season, so good on them! The difference in how Ryan’s parents raised him in contrast to Min-Gi’s parents felt very natural and realistic to me. Ryan’s family is more westernized and has assimilated more into broader Canadian culture.

The fact that Ryan has an English name and not a Japanese name immediately shows that. Min-Gi’s parents not choosing an English name for him is a bit of a surprise; very few Asian immigrants go without an English name back in the 20th century. Even nowadays it’s extremely common for us to go by English or Western names that we, or our parents chose, instead of names in our native language. But there are good reasons to not choose an English name. Perhaps Min-Gi’s parents wanted him to have a closer tie to his Korean roots, or perhaps if they travelled back to Korea to visit family it would be easier for them.

Also, Min-Gi’s parents not supporting his dream of becoming a musician and want him to get a stable job in… I think it was finance? Definitely true back then as it is today. I’m not entirely sure how Ryan’s parents feel about his life choices, and we’ll get into that later.

The character arcs for Ryan and Min-Gi are excellent. This dichotomy of wanting to do the good, responsible thing that your parents want for you because they want you to have the best chance at a good life, and doing what your heart tells you to do, is an extremely relevant character arc. It’s a life decision that is not just an Asian thing, but something anybody can relate to. However, in East Asian cultures that were generally influenced by Confucianism, which includes both Korean and Japanese culture, upholding your duty as a child to not disappoint your parents in any way is something that Asian cultures are prone to emphasizing to a great degree. We see this in other media centered on the Asian immigrant experience as well, such as Kim’s Convenience, Turning Red, and Everything Everywhere All At Once.

What was a bit puzzling to me:

So I'll start off with the thing that definitely raised many many eyebrows if you were an East Asian or Southeast Asian watching the show: Why were Min-Gi's parents so friendly with Ryan's parents when they're Korean and Ryan's family is Japanese?!

So like, not to bring politics into it but… World War II happened. It affected, you know, the world and stuff. And in the Pacific Theatre (god I hate that term), the Imperial Japanese Army… invaded Korea?? Among many other countries??? And did a bunch of war crimes?????

Like, Japan was invading other countries well before WWII even started… This is common knowledge… for Asian people that is.

Yeah I know what you're gonna say. “But Ryan's family is Japanese-Canadian!! They wouldn't have done those war crimes! They would have been sent to internment camps!” Yeah dude, I know! My partner is Japanese-Canadian, remember?! And even if I didn't know him, we learned about the internment camps in history class. It's pretty common knowledge among progressives in Canada and the US. George Takei did a whole musical about it.

But that's not how racism works. I can speak from personal experience that the scars of WWII trauma in Chinese and Korean communities run deep. Even my own parents needed a bit of convincing to be okay with me dating my partner, and my parents were born two decades after WWII ended. My partner said that one time when he and his grandmother got into an elevator with an elderly Korean woman, and at first she was friendly, but once she realized they were of Japanese descent, the elevator ride became deathly silent afterwards.

So when you have Min-Gi’s parents, who were probably born during or slightly after WWII, immigrate to Canada, and then be like… totally okay and hunky dory pals with Ryan’s parents just because their kids were born the same day in the same hospital…? I mean sure, anything can happen. But it definitely speaks to how abnormally accepting, forgiving, and welcoming Min-Gi’s parents are.

To be clear, this isn’t something that pulled me out of the experience, personally. Yes, it is strange, but it’s not impossible for a Korean family to be super okay and friends with a Japanese family. Maybe it’s because their small town has very few Asians and so they have to stick together due to solidarity or something. Maybe Min-Gi’s parents are the type of Christians that believe in the inherent goodness of everyone and giving everyone a chance. Maybe they are just extremely progressive and see Ryan’s family as Canadian more than Japanese (highly unlikely), or they know about the internment camps and that was enough to get over their biases toward them (also unlikely). I dunno, anything can happen.

The other thing that bugged me was that they really didn’t explore Ryan’s relationship with his family to the same depth as Min-Gi’s relationship with his family.

They already set up the contrast of like, you have an immigrant who is more connected to their cultural background, and a third generation descendent who is less connected, and more alienated from his cultural background. That kind of stuff can really weigh on you as somebody who is a minority. You feel like you simultaneously aren’t Canadian enough because you aren’t white, and that you’re not enough of your cultural background because you had to assimilate, or were forced to assimilate.

Yes it makes sense why Ryan would throw himself into his music, and be disconnected from his family. But they didn’t take the time to really explore why he is that way. Ryan barely talks about his family except randomly mentioning that they don’t care what he does with his life. I don’t even know if that really makes sense that they don’t care what he does? Maybe Ryan thinks they don’t care, but his assumption is wrong? Either way they don’t explore this point that much. Even if his parents were more assimilated they would still care if Ryan had a non-standard job, such as being a musician. There is a gap between Ryan and his family/parents that was alluded to, but not explored. Feeling like you come from two worlds but not neatly fitting into either is so quintessential to the immigrant experience of Canadians (and also Americans) it’s a shame they only paid lip service to it.

I mentioned in a different post that Ryan would be monolingual while Min-Gi would be bilingual, and how this could cause tension between them. I imagine Ryan definitely feels inferior to Min-Gi in that sense of loss and disconnect with his heritage, just as Min-Gi is jealous that he feels he doesn't have the freedom to pursue his musical career in the same way that Ryan can. This is all stuff that can take a psychological toll on people, and is something which the Train as a metaphor for therapy should have been primed to tackle. But unfortunately we didn't really get that.

There is a term among the Chinese Diaspora known as “Hollow Bamboo (竹杠)” or “Rising Bamboo (竹升)” [more info]. It's an insult tossed at kids of Chinese ethnicity from judgemental adults for being unable to read/write Chinese or who cannot speak Mandarin/Cantonese/other Chinese languages fluently because they've been “too westernized”. They say we “look Chinese, but are hollow inside, like bamboo.” I don't know if there are equivalent terms for other Asian diaspora/immigrant communities but there must be. This term is controversial, and in my own opinion very unfair, because it blames the kids for this loss of cultural identity when there are so many different factors at play that makes them lose it, all of them outside of their own control.

Again, I think this is a blindspot from the writers just not understanding how much this loss of cultural identity is such an integral part of the experience of being an immigrant, and that it's not only felt in first or second generation Asian-Canadians, but also third or fourth generation, and beyond. It's scary to go out there and redefine what your culture means to you, and how to pass it on to the next generation.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it, a summary of the strengths and the weaknesses in Infinity Train as it pertains to writing about racialized characters. Just want to restate that a lot of what I pointed out is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things and I do overall think the writing is solid. I am not going into this to say that I expected the writers to do a good job, because generally my expectations for media and pop culture to portray POCs respectfully is quite low. At least they didn’t fall back on tired stereotypes, which is a low bar to clear, but it is where the bar still is these days.

If on the off chance Infinity Train does get uncancelled and renewed for more seasons, I hope they take these lessons and craft better narratives for their POC characters. Maybe hire some more non-white writers while you’re at it!

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teecupangel · 10 months

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I come bearing Unity thoughts. How about Yew Branch style Desmond, but in Revolutionary France? And to just make things interesting... As one of the children of Marquis de Sade

Now, I am merely doing Sequence 5 so I have no idea if they show in the game. But! Consider Desmond low-key having fun at the expense of others. Even if it is only because he is bored, he knows who his father is (historically) and modern time sense of modesty does not measure up to those of his now-contemporary France

In short: Desmond finds Cafe de Theatre and has fun making Arno blush. By using modern style innuendo

Before we start, I will confess that I do plan to write a Yew Branch for August 26, Arno’s birthday, but it’s more or less set before Unity because… uuuhhh… plot reasons? XD

Anyway, I will say AC Unity has the easiest time to just kick Desmond anywhere we want because you can pick anyone from the Nomad Assassins in the companion app and bam, you have Desmond’s new identity.

Also, here’s Desmond being reborn as either Arno’s brother or Élise’s brother/twin and, while this is more focused on AC3, here’s Desmond being reborn as Marie Antoinette.

Okay, let’s set up Desmond’s life as Marquis de Sade’s son.

Now, we actually have two options for this (according to wiki):

Louis Marie de Sade (1767) would be a year older than Arno

Donatien Claude Armand de Sade (1769) would be a year younger than Arno

If you wanna go down the ‘Desmond gets a pussy’ route, there’s Madeleine Laure de Sade (1771) as well, but if we’re gonna give Arno some dick, then I like the idea of Madeleine being a secret fangirl who totally ships her brother (and maybe even her father) with that sexy hooded man.

(As far as I remember, they don’t show Marquis de Sade’s children in the game so we’re good to go)

Regardless of who we pick as Desmond’s new identity (an older man showing Arno the ‘ropes’ or a younger man who Arno believes to be the most dangerous of all… in a very different way), Arno’s in for a very… well… informative time of his life.

The de Sade Family:

Marquis de Sade doesn’t formally invites his children to his ‘new kingdom’ but he will welcome them nonetheless if they do join. He and his wife don’t really have a good relationship so he’s not that close to his children. Desmond would definitely be his favorite and, even if Desmond is reborn as his second son (if we’re going for the younger man route), he would still name Desmond as his heir and successor because, as far as he knows, Desmond is his ‘true child’.

Desmond doesn’t want any title or riches or whatever. He does, however, like Marquis de Sade. As a father? Far better than William Miles, hands down. But honestly? Desmond saw how the Marquis was lonely as not many people understood his ‘true self’. Desmond gets it though since he experimented a lot when he left the Farm and learned how sex could be quite enjoyable. Desmond actually knows more than Marquis de Sade and sorta-kinda acts as his proofreader.

In public, Desmond is considered to be polite and as noble as one gets, heavily leaning on Haytham Kenway’s remaining bleeds. In his father’s new kingdom though… total dom. Known to be the bored prince and there’s a lot of people that try to get his attention in any way they can. Desmond is usually just there to make sure his father doesn’t do anything actually illegal or every ‘depravity’ he does would be done with consent on all sides. He does disappear as soon as his father starts… really going because, yeah, he doesn’t have a kink for that one.

The brother we don’t choose will have an inferiority complex against Desmond and think that Desmond is a depraved sick bastard. But he will also remember how kind and understanding Desmond was to him when they were children. Hell, he was still kind to him even when it’s clear that he was trying to bully him (Desmond just thinks it’s cute he thinks he could bully Desmond). This conflicting feelings make him ignore everything that Desmond does in their father’s kingdom while trying to protect both him and their father as much as he could. He would insist he’s protecting the family name though. (His kink is definitely a form of cuckolding)

Desmond’s mother would be distant and ignore all of her children (except maybe her daughter) because the whole relationship was just to keep the power among the nobles so there’s no love lost anywhere. Desmond doesn’t feel anything for her and, yeah, there’s some childish pain there, but he’s good at ignoring his unresolved feelings for his parents at this point anyway.

Madeleine is Desmond’s favorite sibling and she’s quite spoiled. Desmond’s influence makes her more open to their father’s preferences but she’s quite reserve about it, blushing whenever she tries to open up and ends up just going ‘never mind’. Desmond gives her a more clinical explanation to these kinds of things in a form of a notebook of some sort because he thought she would be too embarrassed and awkward if he directly talked to her. This leads her to the path of voyeurism and enjoying erotica so… well… you win some, you lose some. She joins her brother in visiting their father in secret though, because if words got out that the young de Sade girl was a deviant, she’ll be ruined in the eyes of the nobility. Their father and Desmond just go “it’ll be fine.” because they’re actual deviants (by 17th~18th century standard anyway)

His father and sister are the main reason why Desmond stayed in France. He could have gone to America as soon as he turned 13 (maybe even 10 if he was really determined enough) but he didn’t because he didn’t want to leave his little sister and someone has to look after his father without judgmental eyes.

Desmond does, however, send money and supplies to Davenport manor, disguising it as an investment or some sort although the American Brotherhood knows he’s an ally of some kind. He is also Ratonhnhaké:ton’s pen pal.

Arno and Desmond’s Relationship

Arno would see Desmond as a beautiful mysterious man tempting him at every chance. The way he moves, the way he speaks, the way he looks at Arno. It makes Arno feel a lot of things that he had never felt before and he is torn between remaining loyal to Élise who is always running (not from him, Arno doesn’t think that, she’s not… is she?) or finally taking a bite of the fruit the devil keeps dangling in front of him.

Desmond… knows Arno has a crush on him but he actually doesn’t act all that different. He might have a soft spot for Arno because he’s an Assassin who clearly needs help and maybe he pays more attention to Arno than the men and women throwing themselves at the bored prince but, let’s be clear, Desmond isn’t trying to lead him on. He’s flirting with him but it’s more on the side of “I’ve been a bartender far too long that flirting on an easy mark is more of an unconscious choice because I might get more tips” than actual serious flirting.

Unfortunately, Desmond doesn’t know that Arno is having a very confusing bisexual awakening that’s only amped up by all the usual 17th~18th century repression thing soooo, yeah, Desmond doesn’t know he’s affecting the young man more than he was thinking.

Marquis de Sade definitely wants Arno to join in. With him or with his son, he doesn’t care, Arno is just a wonderful specimen to be left in that uptight boring world. He also knows Arno’s ‘crush’ on his son, he keeps pushing him to his son though because that would be fun.

In other words, Desmond is unintentionally creating a love triangle that he honestly have no time or desire to be part of. He doesn’t know about Élise! He honestly thought Arno is single (“He has that pathetic wet virgin kitty vibe to him.” “I don’t think he’s a virgin, my boy.” “Oh, definitely not. Maybe it’ll be better to say he’s ‘pure’?” “Ah. Well then, have fun corrupting him.” “We’ll see, father.”)

Once Desmond learns of Élise, he’ll back off (and even feel a bit icky because he was unintentionally becoming the ‘hoe who the asshole cheated on’) and it’s… it’s gonna get messy, especially considering Desmond’s inclusion in Arno’s life makes Arno wonder if he and Élise are even still together or if… his love for Élise was true and not something twisted by his lonely childhood and his ‘abandonment’ issues.

Oh shit. I just turned this smutty fic idea to angst, abort, abort, abort.

If Desmond and Arno will have a relationship, it’ll be after Dead Kings DLC.

You know what would be funny?

If Arno realized he wasn’t just sexually attracted to Desmond but was in love with him during the ending parts of Dead Kings when he finally accepts Élise’s death.

Then when he returned to Paris?

He learned that Desmond had taken his sister to America and now…

Arno thinks Desmond is the one who got away.

(“Arno, I can’t believe I’m saying this… you can follow him to America. He’s literally living with the American Brotherhood. We know where he is.” “I have missed my chance. There is nothing left for me to do.” “Oh my god. Someone just chokes this drama queen unconscious so we can ship his ass to America!”)

#whiplash!#sorta #now i’m just imagining desmond teaching arno lots of kinks #then writing about it to his sister #who acts like ‘yeeessss my favorite author added a new chapter!’#maybe his sister can marry one of ratonhnhaké:ton’s son #idk #arno’s gonna be dragged into a ship just to get his ass into gear #arno is a human disaster of a virgo #and no one can tell me otherwise #ask and answer #assassin's creed #desmond miles #arno dorian #teecup writes/has a plot #fic idea: assassin's creed #what are we calling this pairing?#arndes #desarn

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midnight-glasses · 1 year

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Could you write canons for Yui and Tsukinami when they become parents?

This post is unfortunately going to be short.... But, certainly! Here's a response to your request but before that here's a little justification: Please note that since the question was not very clear, so... I'll provide a mix of headcanons regarding Shin as a father × Yui Komori, Carla as a father × Yui Komori and the three of them being in a polyamorous relationship with each other without the Tsukinami brothers getting involved romantically with each other, so here are some ideas!

TRIGGERS:

Explicit polyamorous relationship;

Low level parental neglect;

Possessive behaviors;

Sibling rivalry;

Collective Parenting:

Yui and the Tsukinami brothers experience a mix of joy, nervousness, and excitement as they prepare to become parents.

Carla and Shin have contrasting parenting styles, leading to frequent clashes. Carla is more disciplined and strict, setting high expectations for their children, while Shin is more lenient and indulgent, often spoiling them.

This fundamental difference in approach creates disagreements on how to discipline, set boundaries, and shape their children's behavior.

Carla holds onto traditional values and customs, emphasizing the importance of preserving their heritage, he insists on teaching their children the rituals, history, and cultural practices associated with their lineage.

On the other hand, Shin believes in allowing their children more freedom to explore their own identities and make their own choices, sometimes conflicting with Carla's desire for strict adherence to tradition.

Yui's cheerful and optimistic nature helps create a loving and positive atmosphere for their growing family.

Carla tends to be overprotective of their children, wanting to shield them from any potential harm or danger. He is cautious and imposes strict rules to ensure their safety.

In contrast, Shin believes in allowing their children to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from their experiences. This conflict often arises when deciding how much freedom and independence to grant their children, leading to arguments about the balance between protection and personal growth.

The Tsukinami brothers, Shin and Carla, become more caring and gentle individuals as they embrace their roles as fathers.

Yui and the brothers work together to create a nurturing and supportive environment for their child.

Yui and the brothers establish a routine to balance their responsibilities as parents with their other duties and obligations.

Shin enjoys teaching their child new things, from physical activities to practical skills.

Carla, with his calm demeanor, becomes the go-to person for comforting their child during times of distress.

The brothers' protective instincts are on high alert, constantly ensuring the safety and well-being of their little one.

The child grows up surrounded by a rich cultural heritage, as Yui and the brothers share their family traditions and stories.

Family outings become a regular occurrence, with Yui and the brothers taking their child on adventures and creating cherished memories.

The children's own sibling dynamics can add an extra layer of conflict between Carla and Shin. Their differing parenting approaches can influence how their children interact with one another.

Carla's children may develop a competitive nature, striving for his approval and attention, while Shin's children may display a more carefree and independent attitude. This dynamic can cause tension and disagreements between Carla and Shin as they navigate the complexities of their children's relationships.

Yui takes on the role of the mediator between the brothers, ensuring that any disagreements are resolved for the sake of their child.

The child is raised in an environment that values education and encourages a thirst for knowledge.

Yui and the brothers encourage their child's individuality and The child is raised in an environment that values education and encourages a thirst for knowledge.

Shin and Carla take turns reading bedtime stories to their child, fostering a love for literature from a young age.

Yui and the brothers celebrate milestones and achievements together, creating a sense of pride and accomplishment within their family.

The child's room is filled with handmade toys and decorations crafted by Yui and the brothers, showcasing their love and creativity.

Yui and the brothers take turns attending school events and parent-teacher meetings to stay involved in their child's education.

The child becomes the center of attention during family gatherings, surrounded by the love and doting of their extended family.

When their kids have nightmares, here are three distinct ways Carla, Shin, and Yui handle the situation:

Carla believes in addressing nightmares with rationality. He engages his child in a conversation, asking them to describe the content of their dream. With a composed demeanor, he explains that dreams are a product of the mind's imagination and not a reflection of reality. He encourages them to separate fiction from actuality, emphasizing that nightmares cannot harm them in the waking world.

Knowing the importance of feeling safe while asleep, Shin assigns one of his familiars as a “dream guardian” to watch over his child during the night, keeping nightmares at bay and providing a sense of security.

Yui wraps her arms around her child, offering a tight and comforting embrace. She holds them close, creating a cocoon of warmth and love. Her gentle whispers of reassurance and lullabies soothe their troubled minds, lulling them back into a peaceful slumber.

Carla Tsukinami:

Carla is a strict and disciplined father. He sets high expectations for his children and expects them to excel in their endeavors.

He becomes a doting and loving father to their child. He is careful not to expose them to his darker tendencies and focuses on providing a stable and nurturing environment.

Yui's cheerful and optimistic personality shines through in her parenting style. She creates a warm and loving atmosphere at home, always encouraging their child to pursue their dreams and be their true selves.

Carla instills a strong sense of responsibility and accountability in his children. He teaches them the importance of taking ownership of their actions and learning from their mistakes.

He values education and encourages his children to pursue knowledge and intellectual growth.

As a Founder, Carla teaches his children about their heritage and the responsibilities that come with it. He shares stories of their ancestors and the importance of upholding their legacy.

He encourages his children to embrace their individuality and express themselves authentically. He supports their interests and encourages them to explore their passions.

Carla challenges his children to think outside the box and encourages them to question the status quo. He fosters a sense of curiosity and intellectual curiosity in them.

He is a protective father and goes to great lengths to ensure the safety of his children. He teaches them self-defense and equips them with the knowledge to protect themselves.

Carla fosters creativity and imagination in his child, encouraging them to explore the arts and express themselves through various mediums.

He is highly organized and helps his children develop good time management skills. He teaches them the importance of prioritization and setting goals.

Carla promotes resilience in his children, teaching them to bounce back from failures and setbacks. Carla encourages them to see challenges as opportunities for growth.

He emphasizes the importance of respect for oneself and others. He teaches his children to treat everyone with dignity and kindness.

Carla and Yui prioritize the safety and well-being of their child above all else. They are fiercely protective and take every measure to ensure their child's security.

When their children are sick, Carla maintains a calm and composed demeanor. He understands that panicking or showing anxiety will only increase their distress, so he remains level-headed.

At the same time, Yui prepares homemade soups and nourishing meals for her sick children. She believes in the healing power of food and ensures they receive the nutrients they need to recover.

Despite his hidden sadistic tendencies, Carla surprises their child with acts of kindness and affection. He may playfully tease them but always ensures they feel loved and valued.

Carla's intelligence and strategic thinking make him an excellent problem solver when it comes to parenting challenges. He carefully analyzes situations and finds the best solutions for their child's needs.

Yui's innate kindness and compassion greatly influence their child's character. They grow up with a strong sense of empathy and a desire to help others.

Carla's calm and composed demeanor rubs off on their child, who learns to handle stressful situations with poise and grace.

Yui's occasional indecisiveness prompts Carla to help their child develop a strong sense of decision-making and independence. They learn to weigh options and make choices confidently.

Despite their own complicated family dynamics, Carla and Yui ensure that their child grows up in a loving and harmonious environment.

Carla takes an active role in teaching their child self-defense and combat skills, ensuring they can protect themselves if necessary. However, he emphasizes the importance of using these skills responsibly and only in self-defense.

Yui introduces their child to her faith and encourages them to explore their spirituality. They attend religious ceremonies together and engage in meaningful discussions about beliefs and values.

Carla and Yui encourage their child's creativity and provide opportunities for artistic expression. They support their interests in various art forms and expose them to different cultural experiences.

Yui's unwavering faith in their child's potential boosts their self-confidence. She believes in their abilities and encourages them to pursue their passions fearlessly.

Carla fosters a love for learning in his children. He engages them in intellectual discussions, encourages them to read widely, and supports their academic pursuits.

Carla selects names based on their symbolic meanings. He believes that names hold great power and significance, and he chooses ones that reflect the qualities he wishes to instill in his children, such as strength, intelligence or resilience.

He can too prefers names that are unique and elegant, reflecting his refined taste. He seeks out names that are not commonly heard and have a certain air of sophistication, befitting his own aristocratic nature.

Shin Tsukinami:

Shin and Yui's approach to choosing names for their children is a reflection of their shared desire to blend their respective backgrounds and create a unique identity for their family.

Shin suggests names that carry a sense of power and leadership, such as “Akihito” meaning “bright and virtuous person” or “Haruka” meaning “distant and noble”. He believes that these names will instill a sense of pride and determination in their child, reflecting their family's heritage.

Yui, on the other hand, proposes names like “Harmony” or “Serenity”, reflecting her desire for a peaceful and harmonious life for their child. She also suggests names with positive meanings, such as “Akari” meaning “light” or “Haru” meaning “spring”, symbolizing new beginnings and the beauty of nature.

After much deliberation, Shin and Yui finally find common ground and decide on a name that encapsulates both their perspectives. They choose the name “Ryū” for their child, which means “dragon” in Japanese. This name represents strength, power, and nobility while also symbolizing the harmony between their different approaches to life and parenthood.

Despite their contrasting personalities, Shin and Yui find common ground as parents, creating a unique dynamic in their family.

Shin's sadistic tendencies take a backseat when it comes to parenting, as he learns to channel his passion into more positive outlets for his child's growth.

Yui's cheerful and optimistic nature serves as a source of warmth and encouragement for their child, fostering a nurturing atmosphere.

Shin's high pride and narcissism influence his parenting style, as he encourages their child to pursue excellence and take pride in their achievements.

Yui's naivety and indecisiveness sometimes lead to unconventional parenting approaches, but her unwavering love for their child remains a constant.

Shin's respect for his older brother Carla translates into a desire to be a role model for their child, teaching them about loyalty and familial bonds.

Shin's determination to prove himself to Carla is redirected towards being a dedicated and supportive parent, striving to create a strong bond with their child.

As his children grow a bit older, Shin challenges them with small competitions like seeing who can run the fastest or deliver the strongest punch.

Despite his sadistic tendencies, Shin is surprisingly kind and patient with his children. He enjoys playing with them and teaching them new skills, often incorporating his love for pranks into his "lessons."

When his daughters cry or feel sad, Shin is immediately affected and will do anything to cheer them up. He dislikes seeing them sad and will do whatever it takes to make them smile again.

Shin is capable of great tenderness and affection towards his children, especially when they show signs of strength and independence.

Shin and Yui's parenting methods complement each other, with Shin offering discipline and structure while Yui provides emotional support and understanding.

He fiercely defends his children's reputation and will do whatever it takes to ensure they are seen as strong and powerful by others.

Shin is extremely protective of his daughters; he sees them as precious and would do anything to keep them safe and happy.

Shin's children are taught to respect and value their familiars as they are seen as an extension of his own power and status. He is known for being very protective of his familiars and expects his children to do the same.

Shin treats his familiars with the same level of care and attention as his children. He values their loyalty and sees them as important members of his family.

He doesn't hesitate to use his power to ward off any threat or person he considers a danger to his children.

Often, he can be found spending time with them and ensuring they are well taken care of.

Shin loves taking his children on adventures like hikes or camping trips, often inventing exciting stories or legends about the places they visit to make them more thrilling.

He enjoys playfully engaging with his children, such as tickling them or making funny faces, just to see them laugh.

Shin loves playing hide-and-seek with his children and often hides in the most unexpected places just to surprise them.

He frequently criticizes his children's weaknesses and shortcomings but also takes great pleasure in seeing them overcome these challenges and grow stronger as a result.

Shin's overestimation of his own abilities is tempered by Yui's level-headedness, as they work together to guide their child towards realistic goals and aspirations.

Despite his many flaws as a father, Shin loves his children fiercely and would do anything to protect them.

Shin sees his children as a way to prove his worth to his brother Carla, and he is deeply invested in their success as a means to overshadow Carla's own children.

He has high expectations for his children, but he also understands the importance of allowing them to find their own path in life.

Shin often pushes his children to their limits to test their strength and endurance, believing that only the strongest will survive to inherit his legacy.

He is also affectionate and loving, expressing his care for his child through words and actions.

Although I enjoyed writing some of these headcanons, I'm not particularly happy with the outcome. So, if you have any specific requests or suggestions, feel free to ask!

#midnightglasses #midnightglasses headcanons #shin tsukinami headcanons #shin headcanons #carla headcanons #carla tsukinami headcanons #shin tsukinami headcanon #shin tsukinami #diabolik lovers #diabolik lovers shin #diabolik lovers carla #tsukinami carla #carla tsukinami

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notexactlyrocketscience · 5 months

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Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood: a critically kind review from a femme acespec physicist <3

> scroll to the next section for my review on the physics academia content in this book!

First, a quick romance novel review!

spoiler: it wasn’t my favorite but I gave it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75 because being a writer has made me a generally more appreciative reader + I am so starved of woman in physics rep.

the good

It just felt good to read about a woman physicist, who are still incredibly underrepresented in fiction, especially as protagonists. (I’ll go off about that in a minute.)

The romance is so swoony with shoujo manga vibes, I haven’t read straight M/F adult romance novels in a while and I just loved the flutteriness of it.

A couple of chapters were so soft with excellent pillowtalk. There was something about the ambience of the snow, the hypnotic sadness of failure, the prescence of a comforting person.

I enjoyed identifying the relatable parts about physics academia. Hazelwood clearly did a lot of research, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely kept me reading!

the bad

The academia issues are so over-simplified it’s almost juvenile. For an adult novel, even one marketed as a romcom, I expect more nuance, more explanations, more explicit lingering in tight positions.

And then the romance tries to be complex (and has a lot of potential!) but not a lot of conflict really happens.

A fictional physics fued between theorists and experimentalists is a really fun (and actually not far off) concept, but I would have expected some things to be the other way around. (More on that later!)

Okay this is personal but the main couple both have terrible taste in movies. Twilight vs white male rage movies??? There is no lesser evil here

Elsie’s hardships aren’t put in a very serious light. Her diabetes and lack of access to health insurance is used as a plot device to engineer romantic momentum between the characters and/or comic relief.

Just overall, the book tried so hard to remain “light” that I think it fails to garner depth. Because adult lives really aren’t that light all the time, and a book can bring relaxation and joy whilst including real worldly negative experiences.

There were aroace and sapphic side characters, but I wanted so bad for Elsie to be demisexual. It's set up so perfectly only for it to be averted—As a demisexual person myself, Elsie’s feelings about attraction felt acutely familiar to me, and every other reader I've spoken to has agreed that the book took a dissapointing and unexpected turn. I understand Hazelwood may not feel equipped to write queer protagonists but if I were her editor, I would have flagged that and recommended she make it canon. It would have added so much more context and dimension to Elsie, and would’ve put hetero demisexuals on the map. </3

Following up on the above: The smut tries so hard to be meaningful but it ... really is icky, stereotypical, unrealistic allocishetero stuff. Think: the shy inexperienced girl vs the man who knows exactly how to advise her. The characters try to subvert the trope by calling it out, but it feels performative because all is forgotten in the next second. The PiV sex is weirdly conventionally idealistic considering the pairing’s size difference. I’m picky about smut but also forgiving when I do like the dynamic. I just didn’t here.

Following up once again: I was ready to ignore all the repetitive comments about how sexy Jack’s height and muscles were, because sure, I guess Elsie has a type. But the sex scenes solidified the redundancy of it all. I've read this same dynamic in countless smutty heteronormative M/F paperbacks. And I have also been made aware by every Hazelwood reader that all her books focus on this kind of physical build pairing. I just want more diversity, you know?

IDK, I just wanted more physics in here than complaining about teaching, glossed over toxic mentors, and using some quirky physics term in every other sentence. (More on that below!)

I just wanted ... more? It’s not an extremely short novel, but both the plot and the character development fell flat. The ups and downs were too fast and easy, and the placement felt off. I finished the book and wondered, “That’s it? That’s all that happened?” It just wasn’t fulfilling. The side characters aren't expanded upon, and don’t get enough pagetime. My other romance reads this year were Bellefleur's The Fiancee Farce and Mcquiston’s One Last Stop. In both of those novels, the drama was fleshed out with so much care and detail. In comparison, Love, Theoretically may mention similar social difficulties in passing, but failed to really, really show us.

Overall ... the novel was fun for being about physicists but I really don’t see myself picking up another Hazelwood book, especially considering this isn’t even a debut novel. The conventional white steminist vibe and the particular allocishetero M/F dynamic just isn’t my thing.

But perhaps a reader wanting more of a novel and its characters is a good problem to have. Never say never, I guess! I look forward to keeping tabs on what Hazelwood publishes in the future!

Now, onto the physics!

First, most physicists, as good scientists, understand that theory and experimentation are fundamentally linked. It’s true that we each are often biased towards our own methods of research, but it is quite a stretch to imagine full professors so blatantly feud against others solely because of theory vs experimentation. Regardless, I was happy to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the plot that was framed in a genre-specific, lighthearted, humorous way.

Secondly, both theory and experimentation have sources of funding that are motivated in different ways, and Hazelwood's decision to have the theorists struggle with funding cuts due to declining interest in pop culture/the general public is actually quite credible. Experimentation garners a lot more interest from the application and engineering end of society, parts that are easily fueled by capitalism.

However, I think experimentalists in general are far less likely to be mean to theorists than the reverse scenario. Dr Fatima Abdurrahman has a great video essay about that called on her YouTube channel called “Quantum Physics, Feminism, and Objective Reality: What Physicists Don’t Want You to Know About Quantum Mechanics.” Dr Fatima outlines how old white men in physics have maintained this image of unwavering scientific objectivity in the name of rigor, despite studying a field that fundamentally is barely fathomable for humans. In simpler terms: Men, even in theory, pretend to be better, smarter, and more valid as physicists despite being in an infamously iffy field. And I would have liked to see that represented. It was just really hard for me to buy narcissistic grad students mansplaining Elsie about her field, and Elsie’s righteous feminine rage, when the field in question is … physics theory? It just didn’t make sense to me, when all of my personal experiences point to the opposite.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and having a woman theorist in a physics field that’s less popsci-oriented is actually … really cool. And having her love interest be a man in experimentation … sort of subverts gender roles and conventional media expectations.

Let me explain. The reality is that when women are represented in STEM, media prefers to put them in biology, like a nurse to a doctor, a people-oriented nurturer, a mere sidekick to the real “objective” scientist—often a mathematician or an astrophysicist who is always a man. And when women are placed in physics, they are automatically assigned to observational astronomy, which is dismissed as passive and easy. (This is wildly untrue—though styles of research in astronomy has interestingly allowed a somewhat more diverse array of researchers in history. Even today, you’ll see a higher frequency of women and queer people in every astronomy department.)

I think my ideal version of this novel would be retaining Elsie in theory, while also making theorists the overall bad guys in the feud. I would love to have her talk about the unique sexism she faces as a theorist. I would kill for a scene in which Jack gets gobsmacked by how fucking good at math she really is, compared to him (instead of, like, only making fun of it like it’s easy). I would love to read about her getting a tour of his lab, and just more physics content. But maybe I’m the only one saying that, because I’m a physicist. Maybe Hazelwood simplified it all to keep the book appealing to the general masses.

Still, it all read more like a girlpower!!! chant rather than a real commitment to represent a woman in STEM. I savored every moment Elsie or George would go off about physics. I loved Elsie’s conversations with Olive, a different STEM academic. (Monica was more complicated and actually quite interesting, and I wish we could have seen more of her. Heck, I wish we had actually been given any tangible info about Jack’s mom, even.) But I genuinely felt these instances were rare. Elsie referred to being a physicist a lot (and frankly, her mind is more physics-y than any IRL physicist considering the sheer number of physics-inspired figures of speech she uses … but I excused that as silly comic relief, a quirk in Hazelwood’s writing style). But she didn’t tangibly do physics on page. It was disappointing, considering women characters in STEM is what Hazelwood is known for.

And there are physicists who love teaching—even physicists who solely want to teach. Physicists who do pedagogy research. I know the book was mainly trying to criticise the adjunctification and dismissal of physics higher education, and it’s actually quite accurate in representing that most physicists in academia would prefer not to teach. But the excecution also ends up erasing physicists who aren’t in academia just for research. And I say this especially because the validity of teaching physicists as physicists is dismissed in real life. It’s used as justification to further force all physics academics to try to juggle between both research and teaching, whether they want to or not.

Which leads us to bad mentors. I’ve had a bunch of those. As Olive pointed out in an excellent quote, “Academia is so hierarchical, you know? There are all these people who have power over you, who are supposed to guide you and help you become the best possible scientist, but . . . sometimes they don’t know what’s best. Sometimes they don’t care. Sometimes they have their own agenda. […] Sometimes they’re total shitbuckets who deserve to step on a pitchfork and die.” And the thing is, the novel really doesn’t show us any of that (perhaps other than in Monica). We don’t fully get to know what happened to Jack’s mom, or Olive. We are not shown what Dr L’s agenda really was. Their final confrontation was so quick, when in reality shitty mentors are often sticky and entwined with your work, hard to cut off and scarier to talk back to even after you’ve finally realized they’re toxic.

Which isn’t to say the novel is just inadequate about everything. It’s correct in how goofy physics faculty are, and how white man-dominated the field is, how students try to mansplain women profs, how theorists madly work on their computers (as an experimentalist, I could never understand), how publishing is finicky (to put it kindly), and how tenured faculty fail to understand the reality of the job market in academia today. There are certain parts (like the quote above!) where I felt incredibly seen as part of a minoritized identity group in STEM academia. It’s rare to have a book written from this PoV, and as a first I think this novel will always be special for me!

If you’re interested in reading about more fictional women physicists, I would highly recommend skimming through this list I made on GoodReads (and feel free to add more!).

And if you’d like to support memoirs and science communication books by IRL women physicists, then look to further than this other list I’ve also made. (We’re actually currently seeing a boom in these which is inanely exciting to me, so again, contributions are always welcome!)

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thisdivorce · 4 months

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Fic Writer Interview

thank you sweet and lovely jessie @metalheadmickey for the tag!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 14, how did that happen?

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? reckoner, conflict of interest, the sleepover, change like shifting shadows, strangers on a train

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? yes, but lately it takes me a month or two lol. i love comments

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? i don't think i've written anything with a particular angsty ending!

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? i think most of my fics have happy endings (heh)

7. Do you write crossovers? no and i probably won't. there isn't a show i'm obsessed with enough to write a crossover with

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic? yeah quite a few. i'm a misogynist, a racist, a bored digital housewife. lmao. i turned off anon comments because i got tired of it and writing fic should not be a negative experience!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes, all kinds. loving smut, dirty smut, kinky smut, a/b/o. it's not solely what i write, i enjoy smut and plot!

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen? i also hope not

11. Have you ever had a fic translated? no

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before? yes! with @breedxblemickey and our strangers on a train series. it's so fun to write with bree!

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship? guess!

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? i really want to finish all of my WIPs, even if it will take me years (literally). i'd like to finish nightwatch but realistically i'm not sure if i ever will because i'm focused on other projects.

15. What are your writing strengths? depends on the fic. in reckoner, for example, i think it's plot, suspense, and bipolar disorder. in change like shifting shadows, it's all about inner turmoil. i like writing dialogue and saying things without saying them, if that makes sense.

16. What are your writing weaknesses? exposition - big same jessie! i write in the exposition after haha

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? i don't speak any other languages so i won't personally but i don't mind it in other fics.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for? queer as folk! i was so mad b/j didn't end up together i wrote a reunion fic (now i'm like, wtf justin was a baby haha)

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to? none at the moment!

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? reckoner! it's fun, reckless, feral, suspenseful, complex, and i have so many more plans for it. it's not everyone's cup of tea but obviously it has all the tropes i love packed into one very long fic. i'm a little more than halfway through. i just wrote a little bit today!

sorry if you're done it, i haven't been on tumblr too much over the holidays! tagging @gallawitchxx @palepinkgoat @captainjowl @juliakayyy @ianandmickeygallavich @howlinchickhowl @crossmydna @mmmichyyy

#about me #tag games

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itsclydebitches · 5 months

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If Ruby is still depressed in v10 (if it, yknow, happens) but just being communicative and healthy about it, I'll forgive v9.

If she's back to normal and they really did resolve depression on the level of a suicide attempt with 'she's ok now because the afterlife gave her a pep talk' I will tear and bite

Yeah what even (if anything) is going on with Volume 10 nowadays? I've been out of the loop for a while and yet it simultaneously feels like I haven't missed anything...

I personally will not be retroactively absolving Volume 9, even if Volume 10 knocks it out of the water. I've been playing that game for years: "Well, maybe if they finally do this, that, and the other thing we'll have a cohesive narrative!" Yeah, that ship has sailed. They needed to start that work back in Volume 6, Volume 7 at the latest, and things have just consistently gotten worse instead. In this age of full season drops and crazy fast release dates, I'm continually reminded that RWBY is an episode-by-episode show that, whether for creative purposes or commercial, has always taken its time. That produces a very different viewing experience and, for me at least, it means that what we get feels like it has more weight, simply by virtue of existing as the only new RWBY content for a significant, set amount of time. Just like it can be frustrating to hear fans dismiss literal years of worry over bumbleby because they finally kissed in Volume 9, dismissing the horribly handled suicide allegory after 9-ish month of sitting with it because our hypothetical Volume 10 might make something of it doesn't work for me. Yes, there's always something to be said for giving stories time to capitalize on ideas, but we're still left with the impact of those choices now. Far more significantly, I feel like I have a good sense of when a story simply needs more time to flesh out a complex idea (the 2nd season of Good Omens immediately comes to mind) as well as when the issue is indeed a matter of "This is a complex, as of yet unresolved conflict that viewers may not personally like, but that doesn't make it badly written" (again, Good Omens). RWBY, unfortunately, is neither of those things. The first half is a writing disaster and they've consistently shown that they can't pull it together in the second half.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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prince-of-elsinore · 7 months

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might follow this up with more thoughtful meta and less of a vent but I gotta get this out: I finally got around to watching the second half of season 9 for the first time since 2019 and boy do I want answers. namely how did half of fandom (it feels like) get convinced that the season is a rape narrative and that sam's anger and response to the experience have anything to do with the trauma of possession and lacking bodily autonomy. I'll be honest, I was expecting to see where that reading comes from on this rewatch, and instead I realized how objectively inaccurate and misleading an analysis it is. and no, it's not 'open to interpretation'--it's very clear what the conflict is, why Sam reacts the way he does, and what the story arc is; it has everything to do Dean lying to Sam, treating him not like an equal partner but like the little brother that needs to be protected--and here's the crucial part--at the expense of others, and especially at the expense of Kevin's life, and what that means about their priorities and values as hunters. it's got nothing to do with the horrors of possession. it's got everything to do with Sam and Dean's ethical role in the world, their net effect for good or ill. and it's also tied up in Sam's martyr complex. it's a perfectly natural extension of his arc in every season up till now, his struggle with his personal innate nature, and his desire to be and do good.

The cool thing is that when you view season 9 as it's meant to be viewed, you see how perfect a response season 10 is, with its mirror narrative. the idea that season 9 and gadreel are an unhealed trauma hanging over sam and dean is totally false. in 8-10 each brother struggles with his own self-worth, feels they'd be better off dead--and there's situations where the world may be better off with them dead!--and the other brother goes to unethical lengths to save him, because they realize, and ultimately both accept, that they can't lose the other, not under those circumstances. lines like "don't go thinking that's the problem because it's not" and "I lied," that frustrated me before with their opacity, make perfect sense now that my view is no longer clouded by fan-invented discourse. they're linchpins in a cohesive, balanced, multi-season emotional story arc that bring sam and dean to a place of equal footing.

The sort of ironic part is that, I realize now, I never fully understood Sam's perspective in the conflict before. season 9 was stressful for me in the past, because, being a fan first and foremost of the brother bond, I could only really see Dean's perspective and interpret Sam's anger as a rejection of the bond. but I felt that I ought to be able to see Sam's side; I didn't want to just be angry at the character or his writing. so when I came to tumblr in the finale-induced craze of 2020 and read so much meta predicated on the idea of Sam carrying this deep wound over the bodily violation of Gadreel, I more or less thought 'oh I guess that's what I was missing, all these fans who call themselves sam stans repeat it unquestioningly so there must be truth to it, they ought to understand their own favorite character.' How silly of me, to ever trust internet fandom on anything (or stans on the character they stan). I should've returned to the source material ages ago, would've saved me a lot of headache. because I do understand Sam's behavior perfectly now. it doesn't anger me, because I get and sympathize with his values, just as I do with Dean's. turns out when you actually watch the show and don't try to force it to conform to your fan-made narrative, it actually makes sense.

#happy to civilly discuss any of this #but please do not reblog if you're just going to argue or call me a rape apologist #hopefully I've got the folks who would blocked or they've got me blocked tho lol #spn meta #spn season 9 #season 9 meta #spn wank #my meta #spn

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drdemonprince · 11 months

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For the kink thing. As an Autistic person, I was restrained sometimes in elementary school, possibly early middle school because I was forced to put up with the classroom environment for the convenience of the school systems I've been in instead of being allowed to just go outside and not put up with people inside. It's hilarious to me that people try to defend restraining above all else instead of as like, a last resort in genuine emergencies where a kid could hurt another, because I ended up developing kink and fetishes around it that I've still got in my late 20s. Could you imagine the pandemonium over restraint defenders having to contend with defending the sexual side of restraint. Where there's adults giving kids all sorts of sexual fantasies and urges just so they can write on a sheet of paper about who threw tea into what harbor as a precursor to a revolutionary war? Especially when there's alternatives like just letting the kid read the textbook alone outside or something? Sorry if mentioning this interaction between adults and kids is uncomfortable but that's literally what happened to me. I honestly have no idea if that restraint can be defined as csa or if what happened to me counts as that, maybe that got normalized for me. You're a mental health expert you'd probably know.

Thank you so much for sharing about this anon. Before I respond let me clarify that I'm not the mental health expert, I'm a dude with a research PhD who's been in enough academic psychological spaces to recognize that most of what gets passed around as knowledge in our field are just pre-existing cultural biases with fancy scientific terms slapped on top of them.

What you experienced was abuse and coercion, and whether we deem that as sexual or not doesn't necessarily make a difference in terms of how bad and violating that it is. We also can't know for sure whether your kink came from this abuse, but that doesn't change the wrongness of the abuse or of how violating it must feel to enjoy sex that always harkens back to your abuse. You had a traumatic experience that has lingering effects, including being reminded of your abuse during sex, and that tells us all we need to know -- that you were hugely violated and that the violation lingers and affects how safe you feel in your body especially during sex.

Talking about the origins of fetishes is always tricky and fraught, some people in the kink world find that conversation endlessly fascinating, and others reject the importance of it entirely, but I think regardless of where one stands on that issue, it is useful for abuse survivors to be able to talk about how they have eroticized their mistreatment and the complex messy feelings that they have about that. not everyone gets a fetish from abuse, but for those of us who do experience a linkage, talking about it feels really important.

And when it comes to that dynamic, you certainly are not alone. I tend to think that much of my fetish for psychological coercion and mind control is strongly linked to growing up in an emotionally and psychologically repressive environment. Being expected to not only behave but to think and feel in a very narrow range of acceptable ways did a real number on me. as did being (forgive the term) groomed to serve as my parents' sole emotional companion and confidant. i didnt under go official ABA but i was conditioned to comply. and my body, the tricky little fucker that it is, has coped with that history by eroticizing it.

I'm actually really grateful to my body for having made lemonade out of this lemon. I could feel ashamed that my early experiences 'broke' me into only finding controlling and manipulative interactions arousing. and I could meet this need in an indirect, internally conflicted way, say by only dating people who actually are abusive because they're the only ones who really get me fired up enough to sexually respond. And I did do that, until my mid twenties. and it was very damaging to me, but not because what i desired sexually was bad. but because i was ashamed and i wasn't treating myself with respect, and those things are bad.

What works far better for me is being open about my fantasies and finding consenting adults with whom to play them out, and to educate myself on how to go about fulfilling them in a safer way. Or I can at least inform myself of the risks and the rewards and make reasoned decisions about them. that's good too.

That's all a long aside though. let's talk about you. I fucking hate that our educational system prizes compliance above learning. You're absolutely right, you could have just read a book about class subjects out in the grass far away from anybody and it's awful that instead you were locked into an overwhelming room and then physically restrained when you couldn't cope with it.

That kind of shit can really fray a person's relationship to their body and their notions of consent and that DOES affect their sexual relationships no matter what. ABA therapy grooms kids for being abused and for staying silent when they are sexually assaulted.

it can be a wonderful thing that your body coped with that lemon by making you the lemonade of a restraint kink, if you want it to be. But you're not any less enlightened or healed or whatever if you don't want to engage with that or if it's too triggering to. It makes sense that recognizing that your sexuality is linked to your abuse makes you feel gross and weird.

For me, what works is engaging with the kinks that scratch that powerful itch, and then engaging in aftercare, and not bothering myself with ideas about my fantasies making me broken or being ashamed of them or what have you. But from where you're sitting, you obviously have every right to be angry that perhaps your abuse was what saddled you with this kink, and that regardless of whereever the kink came from, your abuse means that enjoying the kind of sex you like is also linked to something horrible that happened to you.

I wish that we could have real, open conversations about this with the child restraint defenders and the child abuse apologists and every supporter of ABA. I would love to see their skin crawl with the realization that the abuse they put children through is so harrowing and world-shifting that some kids brains have to erect entire psychosexual defenses around them in order to cope. i get why you want to really throw that in their faces and make them feel as horrified as they always deserve to feel about advocating for this stuff.

But their reaction of horror would come with the implication that having a kink or a fetish is some kind of pathology, and obviously that's not an idea we buy into around here. it's not good for any queer people or disabled people to really make that claim. And in reality, the people you might want to share that information with, in a spirit of righteous indignation, would not actually be moved or persuaded by it. because they never cared about intellectual consistency or the consent of kids ever in the first place.

thanks again for the message, I'm sure it will bring a lot of self recognition to more people than you'll even realize.

#abuse tw #csa tw #aba tw

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mustangs-flames · 1 year

Text

Boundaries (updated)!

Hail, True Body AU

Hey, I'm Mark/Mustang (whichever you prefer) and I made/make the 'Hail, True Body' AU for the Mandela Catalogue. I've already gave my boundaries briefly when I first started my blog here, but I thought I'd give the points more in-depth here on their own post.

1. Shipping (romantically/sexually)

An absolute and emphatic 'NO'. Do not romantically ship ANYONE in the HTB AU, that also goes for /reader or Y/N content. Not only should you not do this because of it being one of Alex Kister's boundaries, but also because it reduces my work to nothing more than shipping when the story I am telling has no place for it. HTB AU is about platonic and familial love as well as self-love. It's about what it means to be human when it's in direct conflict with the psychological horrors going on all around. It's also about coming to terms with past traumas and hurts and facing them in order to move forward. Shipping undermines everything I am trying to do and want to do with this AU. Plus, having to see NSFW content of your work when you specifically and explicitly don't want it really sucks the fun out of creating something. I am putting my foot down straight out of the gate as hard as I am because I've already had one instance of inappropriateness and never want it to happen again.

That being said, if you want to "ship" (I mean, it's not really 'shipping' in this context) platonically in a 'brOTP' kind of way, you absolutely can. There is plenty of platonic intimacy in the series - hugs, comforting, taking care of each others' wounds, etc. Having a favourite friendship group is absolutely fine and more than welcome if you want to talk about their dynamics or write/draw for them.

2. Art & Fanfic

Have a scene you want to draw or would you like to write a 'what-if' scenario - like maybe a 'what-if Mark had listened to alt!Cesar in the church in chapter 6'? You are absolutely welcome to! All I ask is that you tag it back to the fic series on Ao3 and tag me if you can so I can see and support it - I love seeing what you all make!

This section also covers things like animatics, comics, playlists, and even cosplay!

The tag for this AU is #hailtruebodyau on Twitter and #hail true body au everywhere else!

If you have any questions about the content you are thinking of making, you can always send me an ask or a message and I'll get back to you ASAP!

3. Headcanoning

Loosely tied to the 'Shipping' section, headcanoning characters as being in romantic/sexual relationship with anyone is not permitted. However, you are more than welcome to have headcanons about them as individuals. For example, do you headcanon HTB Mark as transmasc, asexual, etc., or resident eldritch horror alt!Cesar as agender/non-binary? That's awesome, I think having those headcanons are very cool and they're very welcome here!

4. Character Designs

The characters in this AU have very specific designs and outfits across the different eras that these fics take place in. When making art or content of them, please don't significantly change their designs - both physical appearance and their outfits. This is because their designs carry a lot of stuff that is important across the AU, tying into their backgrounds and experiences, etc. For example, if you want to draw Mark post 1992, please don't remove his facial scars or the patches from his denim jacket - they are crucial to his character in this AU!

However, please know you can make small changes. For example, do you think Mark would wear glasses whilst reading? Feel free to add them! Or like @pandoricabox did with their amazing HTB Dave cosplay, you can add small details like stress doodles on skin, or extra jewellery, etc!

If you are unsure if your changes to a character might cross into this boundary, send me a message and I will get back to you ASAP!

5. Roleplaying

This one is a bit more of a difficult one as the rules are a bit more complex(?). I don't mind if you want to roleplay as characters from this AU - roleplay is a good skill to have and it can help greatly with developing writing/storytelling skills! However, the characterisations of the cast in Hail, True Body AU are quite set on their paths and I'd rather not have people complicate things by making public roleplays that have the potential to confuse readers who stumble across them and think they might be accurate depictions of the characters.

So, please don't publicly roleplay as these characters!

However, you are more than welcome to make private roleplays with your friends if that is something you'd like to do! If you end up wanting to share the odd funny or cool moment from said RPs, you can do so, but please make it clear that it is a roleplay and isn't considered canon to the AU.

6. OCs

If you'd like to make your own OCs and write stories about/make art of/roleplay as them within this universe, you are more than welcome to! All I ask is that you follow the same rules as laid out in section 2 for "Art & Fanfic" and credit me for the AU setting you are using. Additionally, if you plan on role-playing as those OCs in this setting, you absolutely can do that publicly - your characters are yours, after all! Only follow section 5 for roleplay regarding the AU's main cast (Mark, alt!Cesar, etc.).

Thank you for reading! You're all amazing and I cannot thank you enough! <3

You are also welcome to screenshot this to share to other platforms!

#hail true body au #htb au #hail true body au boundaries #i hope none of these are super extreme (except for the one to stop proshippers ruining this AU #that one deserves to be harsh as fuck lol)#my work #tmc #tmc au #i hope this doesnt come across as me being mean #i just care a lot about my au #sorry 😅🙃

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